


Twelfth Night

by ChocolatteKitty_Kat



Series: The World Theatre of Santa Fe [2]
Category: Newsies (1992), Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Alternate Universe - Theatre, Christmas, Family Feels, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Light Angst, Modern Era, Roommates, Theatre, mostly just frustration really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2021-01-06
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:41:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 23,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28344825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChocolatteKitty_Kat/pseuds/ChocolatteKitty_Kat
Summary: Jack, Crutchie, and their roommates have made it through Les Miserables, but now it’s time to get ready for the Christmas show at the World Theatre, and they’ve been promised that this means hell on earth. As they go into six-day, 50+ hour work weeks for build, they readily believe that this is true, but things just get worse from there. Between interpersonal conflicts, technical difficulties, and cast and crew that drop like flies for a whole number of reasons, there are days where it’s a wonder the show goes on at all.
Relationships: Crutchie & Jack Kelly
Series: The World Theatre of Santa Fe [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2075787
Comments: 6
Kudos: 2





	1. Partridge in a Pear Tree

Jack Kelly groaned as he hauled himself up the last few steps to his apartment. It was nearly two in the morning, and he was utterly exhausted. The worn wooden steps creaked under him. The night was warmer than he’d become used to for Santa Fe: just cool enough that he was beginning to cool down after a long night at work, but not cold enough that he was shivery. He could see lights on in the apartment through the kitchen and door windows, and had seen them through the living room and bedroom windows out front.  _ Why is everyone still awake? _ Jack grumbled internally, taking the last step up onto the porch. He opened the door as quietly as possible, hoping they wouldn’t hear him come up, but no such luck—he walked in just as Alden happened to be passing through the hallway, carrying a laundry basket up from the lower-level laundry machines they used once the yoga studio below them was closed for the day.

“Guys, Jack is back!” Alden shouted. Jack sighed wearily as a cacophony of shouting reached his ears from deeper in the apartment. “Come on, Jack,” said Alden. “Five minutes, then you can shower and go to bed.

“Fine,” Jack muttered, following Alden towards the living room and kitchen. The rest of their roommates were in the living room: Crutchie, Elaine, and Will on the couch, JD tucked up in the saucer chair in the back corner, and Alan sprawled on the floor in front of the coffee table.

“Hey!” came the cheer when Jack walked into the room. Alan clambered to his feet—very ungracefully for a dancer—and hopped over to whack Jack on the shoulder. “Welcome home, Jack! You’ve officially made it through your first full show run at the World!” Elaine, Alden, and Will clapped, Crutchie joining in a half-beat later, all of them beaming. Alan grabbed a beer from a six-pack on the coffee table and offered it to Jack, who took it gratefully.

“How was strike?” Crutchie asked as Jack stepped over Elaine and Will’s legs and squished himself onto the couch, between Crutchie and the arm of the sofa. It was a tight fit, but it definitely wasn’t impossible to cram four people onto the single piece of furniture.

“A nightmare,” Jack groaned. “Weasel couldn’t seem to figure out what anyone was doing at any point. He kept telling us to do things that were already done. Plus, we had the whole warehouse crew there half the time because we loaded the truck up with stuff they’re saving to store and they carted that off while we worked on breaking down the set.”

“How far did you get?” Elaine asked

“Pretty much torn up,” said Jack. “Not too much to do tomorrow—what time are we in tomorrow?”

“Ten, for the official roll-out for Christmas,” said Elaine. “And then we’re only in until two, to get laundry started. When’s crew in until?”

“Four,” Jack sighed. “But I guess I can’t complain. Six hours, and then three days off.”

“Three days off, three concerts, one day off, and then it’s build,” Elaine sighed. “And if you thought  _ Les Mis _ was a bad build, just wait until we do Christmas.”

“You’re making me really excited about this,” Jack grumbled.

“Hey, Sniper already quit, and no-one is blaming him,” Elaine laughed.

“Wait, Sniper quit?” Alan, who had laid back down on the floor, popped up over the coffee table to stare at her and Crutchie.

In the hallway, there was a thump and footsteps from the direction of the ladder up to the crawlspace, and then Alden appeared in the doorway. “Sniper quit?” he repeated, mouth hanging open.

“Yeah, like a week ago!” Crutchie laughed. “You guys didn’t know?”

“No!” Alan and Alden chorused.

“He got a job with a lighting company paying almost double what he got at the World and took it,” Crutchie said.

“Again, no-one is blaming him!” said Elaine.

“Yeah, not with a salary like that,” Alan laid back down.

“When is his last day?” Alden asked.

“He’s technically employed until the day before build starts, but that’s an off day, so I guess Saturday is his last day working?” said Crutchie.

“Wow, that’s so soon!” said Alden.

“Yeah, we won’t even see him again at work. We’re at the church rehearsing all week.” Alan’s voice was muffled from the floor.

“Hey, what’s this roll-out thing like, Laine?” Jack asked, squirming slightly to try and get more comfortable on the squished couch.

“Nothing crazy,” Elaine shrugged. “They’ve already confirmed the cast and set list anyways, so it’s basically just Spice handing out little packets that’ll have, like, cast headshots, a set list—which we already have—and then design references that she has. Since we’re recycling this Christmas show, most of that will probably be from the last time they put it on five years ago. And there won’t be anything for costumes, basically, because we’re always an afterthought, but, you know. Still have to be there. But at least there will be food.”

“Food?” Crutchie perked up.

“Yeah, donuts and pastries and stuff,” Elaine shrugged. “Nothing crazy, but it’s usually good stuff because Spice will be there.”

“Nice,” Crutchie nodded.

“Oh, Jack, Crutchie and I are driving over around nine thirty so we can get laundry in before the meeting,” said Elaine. “Do you want to ride along?”

“Sure,” Jack sighed. “Does that mean leaving at nine thirty, or trying to be there by nine thirty?”

“Uh… leaving no later than nine thirty, but preferably earlier?” said Elaine. “Just when everyone’s ready. But if you’re not ready by nine thirty, you’re just out of luck.”

“Got it,” Jack laughed. He finished his beer and hauled himself off of the couch. “I’m going to bed. I want to get as much sleep as possible before this nightmare starts and I want to be as well-rested as possible by then.”

.*.*.*.*.*.

Two weeks later, Jack was already longing for sleep. Build had barely been going for two weeks, but as they closed in on their second Monday off—in keeping with the show schedule they’d have through November and December, they worked Tuesday through Sunday, with Mondays as their only days off—he was already exhausted. The crew had jumped straight into ten-hour workdays, which were exclusively spent building and painting the set and large props. Jack had also been called on to join Weisel—and occasionally Elaine or Crutchie, who he pulled from wardrobe occasionally—to work on smaller props, but for the most time was left to his own devices. Towards the end of the first week came a new addition to his routine as he was introduced to Mush Meyers, one of the primary painters from the shop crew. Mush took Sniper’s place with Jack, teaching him scenic painting techniques, and being consistently surprised at Jack’s mastery of them.

If the days were rough for Jack, they were worse for Elaine and Crutchie. Wardrobe went straight into twelve-hour days, and the two of them were both utterly miserable. It was no longer just them, Sarah, and Carol in the wardrobe room: they were joined by the overhire stitchers who usually worked from home, but spent Christmas camped out in the sewing room instead. They even “borrowed” one of the dining tables in the green room and set it up as an extra sewing table. Elaine and Crutchie, meanwhile, were generally banished to set up camp in the green room or one of the dressing rooms, where they were consistently given busywork to do.

Jack glanced up as the front door slammed.

“Careful!” he heard Crutchie say.

“Who cares?” Elaine grumbled. She all-but stomped down the hall, past the living room, and into her room, slamming that door behind her as well. Alden got up and went into the kitchen to heat up food for the two of them. A few minutes later, Crutchie appeared, already changed into clean clothes. He looked exhausted, and already had bags under his eyes.

“Chili?” Alden asked.

“Sure, thanks,” Crutchie sighed. Alden handed him a bowl, and Crutchie sat down at the breakfast nook to eat his food.

“How was  _ your _ day?” Alan asked warily, peering around the kitchen doorway from the couch in the living room.

“It was a day,” Crutchie sighed. “Carol’s miserable. She and Linda sit in the sewing room all day and complain about everything, and talk about how sick Linda’s husband and Carol’s dad are. She sent work home with Connie a few days ago, and when Connie brought it back today it was all done wrong, so she was mad about that. She’s still not letting me or Elaine do basically anything. Today, Elaine managed to get her to let her quick-rig some shirts—which Carol said she was doing wrong, but Elaine insists she wasn’t—and I got stuck seam-ripping everything Connie took home and did wrong.”

“Don’t forget about Barb,” Elaine grumbled, stomping out of her room and into the kitchen. “Nasty quips at everyone but Sarah, going off and wandering around the parking lot for an hour and a half while the rest of us are on lunch, biting people’s heads off for no reason. And, look, I’m sorry if this makes me a bad person, but I just really don’t want to spend the  _ entire _ day hearing about Linda’s husband’s testicular cancer! In detail!”

“Gross,” said Alden. Jack and Alan exchanged glances, both of their faces expressing similar sentiments.

“Also, no, I wasn’t quick-rigging the shirts wrong,” Elaine snapped. “Carol thought I was putting the buttons on  _ after _ the velcro, and they’re supposed to go on before, because otherwise the thread can get caught and break on the hard velcro, but I  _ wasn’t _ doing that, I was putting them on  _ before _ , but she still got all nasty to me anyways.”

She sat down on the other stool at the breakfast counter, out of Jack and Alan’s line of sight, with a huff. “Oh, and don’t forget the best part! Not only does Carol refuse to teach us how to do anything, and all she’ll let us do is busywork—even though she  _ knows _ I can do better than that—she’s been  _ complaining _ about how we’re not helpful enough. Sarah heard her tell Weasel at lunchtime yesterday that he should take me and Crutchie for props so that we can ‘actually be useful for a change’.”

“Sounds promising,” Alan quipped.

“Fuck off,” Elaine snarled.

“Will do.”

.*.*.*.*.*.

Sunday was more of the same. Jack, Elaine, and Crutchie drove to the theatre together, the car silent. “What do you think Carol’s mood will be like today?” Crutchie teased as they pulled into the parking lot.

Elaine groaned. “Really? You couldn’t let me ignore the fact that Carol exists until I saw her? Like, five more minutes?”

Crutchie laughed.

Elaine parked the car and they clambered out to head into the building. Race, Albert, and Elmer were standing outside, Race and Elmer smoking, all three of them looking cranky. “Glad to see we’re all in the same place mentally today, lads,” Elaine called as she passed, coughing as she walked through the cloud of their cigarette smoke.

“‘Lads’?” Albert repeated, laughing.

“Shh.”

Upstairs, she and Crutchie clocked in, and got straight to work. Elaine had a handful of bowties from the band members’ fittings that she was setting lengths on, while Crutchie was writing out nametags and pinning them in costumes. Carol was the next one in; even though they were in a dressing room down the hall, they heard her come in, speak loudly to the people in the offices, and head the other way towards the sewing room.

It was around lunchtime when Weisel came looking for Elaine. Crutchie glanced up when she left, but returned to his work without a word. When she came back, she was grinning. “Hey,” she said, poking him in the shoulder. “They have another spot-op for you.”

“Oh, really?” said Crutchie. “Did they hire someone to take Snipe’s place?”

“Not technically,” she said. “It’s me!”

“Really?” Crutchie grinned up at her.

“Yep! They’re worried about not being able to find someone, so they’ve decided to move me to spot and have Barb one fill in as swing dresser. Weisel said he offered her spot first, but she wouldn’t do it, but she agreed to dress.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Which seems weird to me, because I heard that last year she agreed to swing dress for Christmas, but backed out at the last minute and only actually did it when Carla was sick for a few days. So I’m kind of surprised he’d even ask her again. Not that I’m complaining; at this point I’d rather be on spot, rather than around all the wardrobe and backstage negativity.”

Crutchie sighed. “I get what you mean.”

“So I’ll be up with you starting tech week,” Elaine said. “No more wardrobe—well, we’ll still be here outside of rehearsal, but it’ll be, like, less than half the time we’re currently spending here.”

“Ugh, I can’t wait,” Crutchie laughed, rolling his eyes.

“To get away from the bitchiness?” Elaine grinned. “Or to spend all of your time stuck up on the catwalk with me?”

“I mean, I already spend all of my time at work with you, so that won’t change anything,” Crutchie laughed.

“Fair enough,” Elaine said. “At least on the catwalk, no-one will be talking about testicular cancer,” she whispered.

Crutchie laughed again. “I sure hope not, at least.”


	2. Turtledoves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As tensions escalate in the wardrobe department, Crutchie and Elaine make some decisions.

Despite how long the days themselves felt, as they spent more and more of their waking hours trapped within the theatre’s walls, the weeks flew by. Mondays were never long enough for everything they needed to get done. Alan, Alden, and Will picked up a lot of slack around the apartment, particularly with cleaning and cooking, as Jack’s days lengthened to twelve hours and Elaine’s and Crutchie’s started to creep past thirteen, then fourteen. Even JD helped out, often making lunches for all of them before they were even awake in the morning, leaving for class before anyone could find out and thank him.

In the scenic department, everyone was surprised when Henry quit abruptly two weeks before the show was set to open. He only gave a week’s notice, and Weisel was left scrambling to fill his position on the stage crew, at least part time, before the show opened. Finally, Mush was enlisted—somewhat unwillingly—to run the position during the week, while Weisel himself would handle the track on weekends.

In wardrobe, things only got more and more rough for Elaine and Crutchie. After the news that Elaine would be running the show as a spotlight operator, Carol stopped talking to her, except for to bark orders or brusquely show her how to do something, acting like it was the greatest inconvenience in the world. She was hardly any kinder to Crutchie, generally refusing to teach him how to do anything at all, and assigning him increasingly inane tasks. As the days went on, more and more of the other stitchers began to join her in their silent treatment of Elaine and general rudeness to the two of them. By the start of tech week, Elaine was coming home in tears most nights, frustrated at the treatment and lack of faith in her abilities. Crutchie was the one who finally put his foot down one night, when they left earlier than the other stitchers and Elaine didn’t even make it out the door before she started crying.

“Hey, I’ll be right out,” he said. “I forgot; I need to talk to Weisel.”

Elaine didn’t question him and left, the door swinging shut behind her. Crutchie took a deep breath and crossed the wagon house to where Weisel was sitting and working on some of his props. “Mr. Weisel?” he said.

“Ah, Crutch—sorry; Charlie,” the man squinted up at him. “What’s up?”

“I just wanted to talk to you about something,” Crutchie shifted his weight slightly, uncomfortable with the conversation. He kept his voice low in the cavernous warehouse, trying to make sure that the handful of people left around—Finch and Elmer, working on getting audio things set up, along with Mush and about half of the shop crew—wouldn’t hear. “So, in the wardrobe department, Elaine and I have kind of been having some issues for the past few weeks? And it’s kind of been worse for Elaine. Carol hasn’t spoken to her in two weeks, pretty much since it was decided that she’d be working spot, and everyone else has been getting more and more rude to both of us. It’s really been upsetting Elaine and making it hard to get work done, especially since they’re all refusing to show us how to do anything we don’t already know, and yet still complaining that we don’t have enough value in the department. We’re both willing to work hard and open to learning, but if no-one will teach us anything, how can we do that?”

Weisel nodded along as he spoke, face grave. “Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I’ll have a word with the ladies.”

Crutchie immediately felt guilty.  _ Elaine is  _ not _ going to be happy about that _ . “Thank you. We appreciate it.”

By the time he got out to the car, Elaine was drying her eyes, reduced to sniffling as she caught her breath. “You good?” she asked, once he was in with the door shut.

“Uh, yeah.”

“What did you need to talk to Wease about?”

Crutchie took a deep breath. “About Carol. And the other ladies, and the way they’ve been acting towards us, and how they’ve been treating you especially.”

Elaine turned and looked at him, her face twisted in horror. “You did  _ what _ ?”

“Elaine, you didn’t even make it out the door tonight before you started crying!” he said. “I’m fed up with all of it, and I’m sure you are too. We can’t spend the rest of build, much less the rest of  _ however _ long it takes for them to start acting like grown-ups, like this. Or, at least,  _ I _ can’t.”

Elaine sighed. “Look, I know you’re right. But I’m still scared how this might come back to bite us later.”

.*.*.*.*.*.

The next morning found both Crutchie and Elaine dragging their feet as they headed into the building. Jack, who had been filled in on both the conversation with Weisel and the events of the past few weeks, walked supportively with them as they entered the building. The first person they saw was Weisel, who stopped Elaine and Crutchie before they could go upstairs. Jack cast a sympathetic glance back over his shoulder at them as he vanished into the stairwell.

“I just wanted to let the two of you know that I had a talk with Carol and the other ladies last night,” said Weisel. “If you two keep having problems, let me know, and we’ll take any other steps we need to.”

They both nodded, then headed upstairs to clock in. On their way out of the office, Elaine was snagged by Carol, who took her into the cutting room. A nervous Crutchie made his way to the dressing room they had been set up in at the end of the night before. Elaine appeared a few minutes later, eyes red. She took a shaky breath, looked at him, and said: “I need to talk to Weisel.”

Crutchie worked quietly for the next ten minutes. When Elaine came back, she sat down at her spot and cried silently for almost half an hour.

“Hey! how are you guys?” they both turned to the door at the voice to find the tall, thin form of the band’s violinist smiling cheerfully at them. As soon as she saw Elaine’s face, she gasped and stepped into the room. “Are you okay? Did something happen?” she lowered her voice further. “Is Carol giving you trouble again?”

Elaine forced a smile. “It’s okay. Nothing I can’t handle.”

A few minutes later, she and Crutchie set aside their projects and headed for the catwalk. Elaine was uncharacteristically silent, as she had been all morning. Crutchie planned to ask her what Carol had said once they were out on the catwalk, but she beat him to it, stopping on the landing at the top of the last flight of stairs, right in front of the door out onto the catwalk.

“I quit.”

“Wait… what?” Crutchie asked, halfway through the process of attaching the velcro strap she’d made him to his crutch.

“Carol told me that the reason she wasn’t speaking to me was because she was mad about something I did—and she was mad that Weisel pulled me for spot, too, but she said it was mostly about that—and she just didn’t feel like dealing with it so she decided to just ignore me until she felt like handling it,” Elaine explained, already crying again.

“Are you serious?”

“I’ve had enough people like that in my life; I won’t deal with it at work, where I can control whether or not I’m exposed to those people. So I told Weisel that once the Christmas show ended I was done here. I’m not going to leave before them, since we’re already two people down, but if they find and hire someone else, I’m out.”

Crutchie stood frozen for a moment. Wordlessly, he opened his arms, and Elaine lurched into them for a long, tight hug. When she pulled away, still sniffling, she wiped her eyes and smiled sadly. “Come on. We have to go fill the confetti blowers.”

.*.*.*.*.*.

“I don’t know, man, it’s just crazy backstage,” Jack sighed. He was sitting on the kitchen counter, eating a bowl of cereal, and talking to Alan, who was perched on one of the breakfast nook stools. “Mush has no idea what he’s doing. He’s never run a show before. And I know this is only my second show, but I really feel like I picked up my track for  _ Les Mis _ way faster than he seems to be picking up what he’s doing for this. And Weasel is always cranky because Mush is doing something wrong, and that means the rest of us have to watch out because he’s been getting all nit-picky at us, too. Even though we aren’t even done building our tracks and stuff.”

They both glanced out the kitchen window as the porch light flicked off. “Did the bulb burn out, or did Elaine and Crutchie just get back?” Alan asked. “I didn’t hear them come in.”

“We’re here,” said Crutchie, coming through the kitchen archway.

“Mujadara in the pot on the stove,” Alan pointed. “And there’s naan in the microwave. Yogurt’s in the fridge—you know, as yogurt usually is.”

“What’s wrong?” Jack asked, glancing between the unusually subdued pair. Elaine wasn’t crying—as she generally was when she came home these days—but her eyes were red and puffy, and she was sniffling and breathing shakily.

“I quit my job,” she said softly.

Alan choked on the water he was taking a sip of. “You  _ what _ ?”

“Wait, what?” Jack set his cereal aside and hopped off the counter. “Did something happen?”

Alden’s head popped around the corner from the direction of the crawlspace. “What happened?”

“Elaine quit her job,” said Alan.

“You  _ what _ ?” Alden gasped.

“What happened to Elaine?” came Will’s muffled voice from further around the corner.

“She quit her job!” Alden said.

“She did  _ what _ ?”

“Oh, my word, you guys sound ridiculous,” Elaine grumbled. “I quit my job. It won’t take effect until the show ends or they hire a new spot op, but it happened.”

“Why?” asked Alan, recovered from his choking spell.

“Carol?” Will came around Alden and offered Elaine a hug.

“Among other things,” she shrugged. “It’s fine. I mean, I’m not happy about it, but it’s whatever at this point. I don’t care anymore.”

Crutchie handed her a bowl of mujadara. “At least you have a few months to look for another job.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty much how I’m looking at it,” she sighed. Her eyes filled with tears again as she looked around the room. “I’m just going to miss working with you guys.”

Alan wrapped an arm around her shoulders and gave her a hug. “Well, we’ve got a few more months of working together left to savor, so let’s just take advantage of that.”


	3. French Hens

For the next few weeks, through tech and into the opening of the show, the catwalk was the best place in the theatre to be, at least for Elaine and Crutchie. They found themselves climbing the several flights of stairs as early as possible before each run or show to take their time filling the confetti cannons.

“Cannons” was a term used loosely. They both preferred to call them blowers, since it was a little more accurate. There were five of them total on the catwalk—at least that were in use for this show; there were a few more that weren’t being used—one on each of their spotlight platforms, and three on a second walkway about twenty feet closer to the stage than the one their platforms were on; this was also where many of the catwalk-mounted lights were hung, and walking across it was a terrifying experience, between the height (since the house floor sloped down from the back of the room to the front of the stage, it grew further and further away from the catwalk the closer to the stage you got), the narrowness of the pathway, and the fact that it was cluttered with confetti blowers, power cables, colored gels for the lights, mounts for the blowers, and a fair amount of other detritus—plus loose confetti that had escaped the blowers in the wrong direction and fallen onto the floor of the catwalk, rather than down onto the audience.

The confetti “cannons”—or blowers—were sizeable plastic storage boxes, about sixteen by nine inches and about six inches deep. They were mounted on small wooden platforms that set them level to or just above the lip that ran along the edge of the catwalk platform. The boxes were bolted to the platforms, and aircraft cable connected their lids to the nearest railing post or something else to secure them to the catwalk and reduce falling risk. There were holes cut into both of the long sides of the box; on one side, the rectangular hole ran almost the width of the box, while on the other it was cut to just fit around the mouth of a small but powerful air blower.

Before every show, during the pre-show period of time, Elaine and Crutchie would go up to the catwalk and fill the blowers. This meant that they would each take a bag of gold mylar confetti, sit on the edge of the platform the blowers were mounted on or on the floor of the catwalk, and spend the next several minutes trying to separate the pieces of mylar, which tended to stick together for a variety of reasons, until there was enough to cover the bottom of the container. Due to the tripping hazard of the front catwalk, Elaine usually filled the three there while Crutchie took care of the two on their platforms.

Generally, they would clock in, drop their things off in the sewing room, and help out with any minor repairs that were needed—if Carol let them—for about an hour before heading up to the catwalk to fill the blowers. On days when there was more than one show (which was every day but Tuesday and Sunday), they would repeat the confetti process after eating lunch. Since Elaine kept her lunchbag in her desk in the sewing room, she would go back upstairs to return her lunchbag there and clock in, despite Crutchie repeatedly reminding her that she was welcome to leave it in his locker along with his. After separating, albeit briefly, they would reunite in the wagon house before heading up to the catwalk together.

One afternoon, when Elaine went to take her things upstairs, she arrived at a closed sewing room door—which was extremely unusual. The door to the sewing room was almost never shut. Uncertain, she reached out to knock on it. The door swung open to reveal the stage manager, Carol, Sarah, and Barb all seated at the desk chairs, rolled into a loose circle in the center of the room.

“Oh, you can come in!” the stage manager called over his shoulder. “We were just having a little wardrobe meeting. Nothing important.”

“Cool; I was hoping to be able to get to my desk,” Elaine muttered.  _ If it’s nothing important, why did you feel the need to close the door? _ she thought, but kept the sarcastic comment to herself. She slipped through the circle of chairs, offering Sarah a cheerful smile.

“That’s something I wanted to bring up, actually,” said Barb.

“What’s that?” asked the stage manager, turning his attention back to the other women.

“Elaine’s desk. If she’s not going to be working wardrobe, I don’t see why she should have a desk in the  _ sewing _ room. For all of build, we’ve had to work around this desk, when we could have been using the space there, but we weren’t allowed to because it’s  _ her _ desk. If she’s not going to be running wardrobe, she should clean out the desk so we can use it. If she’s not wardrobe, she doesn’t belong in the wardrobe room” Barb crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair while she spoke, pointedly ignoring Elaine.

Everyone froze, silent. Elaine felt her heart clench, somewhere between anger and pain. She dropped her lunchbag on the desk with a thud.

“Barb, that was completely inappropriate,” said the stage manager after a moment.

“Don’t worry,” Elaine snapped, voice low and hard, “in a few weeks the desk will be cleaned out anyways. I don’t have a problem doing it early.”

There was another beat of silence.  _ Shit. I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone that I quit. _ The thought flashed through Elaine’s head belatedly.

“That’s not necessary,” said the stage manager hurriedly, trying to fill the uncomfortable silence.

“No, really; I don’t mind,” Elaine snapped. Her throat was tight, and her voice sounded strange even to her. She jerked away from her desk, heading for the door, but Sarah reached out and caught her wrist.

“Elaine, wait”—

“I have to go to the catwalk,” said Elaine, pulling her hand away from Sarah’s. She marched to the door and shut it firmly behind her, then went to clock in, head spinning. Once she was done with that, she walked to Weisel’s office next door to the wardrobe computer and stuck her head in. “Hey, Weisel? Do you have a minute?”

“Sure,” the man said. When she gestured for him to follow, he stood up, and she led the way into the cutting room across the hall, closing the door behind them.

“Would it be possible for me to keep my things somewhere besides the sewing room?” Elaine asked, keeping her voice down. Even with the door closed, she didn’t want anyone overhearing.

“Do you mind if I ask why?” Weisel asked, clearly confused.

“I’m just not super comfortable in the sewing room any more,” said Elaine. “There’s not really much I have to leave here, it’s mostly just that I need somewhere to keep my, like, bag and jacket and lunchbag during the day.”

“Sure; I think there’s an open locker in the basement.”

“Thanks, that would be great.”

She slipped past him without another word and headed for the stairwell. Despite the fact that she was late, she didn’t see Crutchie in the wagon house when she got there. “Hey, Jack, did Crutchie already head to the catwalk?” she called across the walkway taped on the floor in front of them.

“No, I think he and Buttons are still downstairs,” said Jack.

“Thanks.” She bounded down the last few stairs. She was still furious, but the anger was fading more and more into genuine hurt, and she was beginning to have to fight back tears. She took a step into the basement and spotted Crutchie and Buttons on the other side, in the crew area, chatting languidly. “Crutchie!” she shouted. “You ready?”

The blond’s head whipped around, and it took him a moment to find her in the doorway. “Yeah! Sorry! I didn’t realize how late it was.” He said goodbye to Buttons and hurried to join her. They headed upstairs together, then through the wagon house, backstage, house, and lobby, then up the several flights to the catwalk, silent the entire way. Crutchie had to hurry to keep up with Elaine, who was walking as fast as her short legs would allow her. As soon as they got to the final flight of stairs, tucked safely away from the rest of the world through the administrative offices and behind two of its own doors, she lost her control. At the top of the stairs, Crutchie turned around to see her just behind him, shoulders shaking as silent tears poured down her face.

“What’s wrong?” he asked as he reached out to pull her into a tight hug.

They stood together for several minutes, Elaine just crying as quietly as she could in the echoey stairwell into Crutchie’s shoulder, before she pulled away, sniffling and trying to catch her breath. She wiped her eyes and wrapped her arms around herself. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I got your shirt all wet.”

Crutchie smiled kindly. “It’s okay. What happened?”

“Barb said I don’t belong in the sewing room any more,” Elaine sniffed, trying to keep from crying again. “She said that if I’m not going to do wardrobe, then I shouldn’t be able to have a desk in the wardrobe room, because they can use it better. Like I’m just… taking up space, or something.”

Crutchie’s jaw dropped. “Wait, seriously? That’s ridiculous. What did you say?”

Elaine snorted a little laugh. “I said I didn’t mind clearing it out since I’d be gone at the end of the show anyways, which, once Weisel hears about, I’ll get in trouble for. Since I’m not supposed to tell anyone I quit yet.”

Crutchie laughed a little as well. “Oh well. If he’s going to get mad at anyone, he should get mad at her. That was kind of an awful thing to say.”

“Right?” Elaine laughed again, louder and more steady this time. “If I hadn’t quit already, I would be after that. I’m not going to work with someone who thinks it’s okay to say that to  _ anyone _ , but I take particular offense since it was directed at me. But whatever. It happened. It’s done. Come on, let’s go fill the confetti blowers before we get yelled at.”

.*.*.*.*.*.

When they returned from filling the confetti blowers, it was Elaine’s turn to be pulled aside by Weisel.

“Hey, so, Matthew and Carol and Sarah filled me in on what happened,” he said, voice low to avoid attracting the attention of the crew and cast members swarming around them. “We had a talk with Barb and made sure she understands that what she said was completely inappropriate. You don’t have to clear out your desk.”

“I’d still feel more comfortable not having to be in there if I’m so unwelcome,” Elaine said stiffly. She pointedly refused to make eye contact with him, staring vaguely over his shoulder to where Crutchie, Albert, and Jack were watching them.

“Okay,” Weisel nodded. “If that’s what you want, that’s fine.”


	4. Calling Birds

“Hey, Finch, do you want to hear a bad joke?”

Finch groaned and turned around, looking down at Elaine. “No.”

“Okay. What do you get when you combine a fork, a spoon, and glitter?”

“Go away.”

“Sporkles!”

“I hate you.”

“Have a good show!” she called over her shoulder, bouncing away towards Crutchie and Sarah on the other side of the wagon house.

Jack laughed and shook his head. “You don’t  _ actually _ hate her, do you?” he asked.

“No. Actually, that one was kind of funny. Just don’t tell her I said that.”

Jack laughed again. The door on the other side of the wagon house opened, ushering in a gust of cool air, along with a gaggle of loudly chattering children. The rear of the group was brought up by none other than a haggard-looking Davey Jacobs. Jack felt his spine snap straight, his breath catching in his throat. He coughed a little, trying to hide the weird noise he made when that happened. Before he could say or do anything, Davey turned towards him and immediately lit up. He grinned and waved over at them, and, once Les was safely in the stairwell and heading downstairs with the rest of the kids’ cast, he said something to Sarah and then headed towards Jack and Finch.

“Hey!” Davey called, grinning, as he gave them a little wave once he was closer. The wagon house was loud today; some of the youth cast who had arrived early had already come upstairs to stretch in front of the big mirrors and were chattering excitedly with each other and the adult cast. The dancers were running through a tricky spot in choreography—only half in their costumes, which was always a little funny to see—and several different singers were warming up in the curtained-off dressing rooms. In the stairwell behind him, Jack could hear both another singer and a few of the musicians warming up together. All of the racket faded away immediately and he focused in on Davey.

“Davey! Hey! It’s been a while.”

“Hey, Finch. How’s the show been going for you?”

“Not too bad. It’s Christmas.” Finch shrugged

“Sound check!” came the call from the stage manager. Finch sighed and threw up a peace sign as he headed for his console.

“Hey, Jack,” Davey finally turned towards the other man, offering him a suddenly shy smile.

“Heya, Dave,” Jack grinned fondly. “How’s it going?”

“Not too bad,” Davey shrugged. “I’ve been busy working on final papers, which is why I haven’t been around so much.”

“Oh, when are your finals?”

“First week of December. But a lot of the papers—at least for classes with written finals instead of just big papers—are due next week or the week after. So I’ve been working on them for a while now.”

“How many papers have you got?”

“At least one per class. So… I think the total is six? I think I have two classes with two.”

“That doesn’t sound awful.”

“Yeah, but the shortest one is a ten to twelve-pager,” Davey laughed. “The longest is fifteen to eighteen.”

“I take it back.”

“Yeah,” Davey laughed. “I don’t mind writing them, and I love the research part, but… It’s kind of a lot. Plus studying for my written finals. At least I only have two of those this semester, thankfully.” He shrugged, stuffed his hands into his pockets, and grinned. “On the bright side, once I’m done with all my finals, I’ll get to spend more time here again. Give Sarah a break from dealing with Les  _ and _ work all at the same time.”

Jack laughed. “Hey, how’s your dad doing?”

“Better. He finished chemo, and it looks like it worked, so fingers crossed he’ll be in the clear now.”

“That’s great! I’m glad to hear it.”

“I’m bringing him and my mom to one of the shows this weekend. I’ll try and bring them backstage so you and Crutchie can meet them. They’ll be excited to meet you both; Les and Sarah both talk about you two all the time.”

“I look forward to it,” Jack grinned.

They both jumped as Weisel’s voice blared out of the loudspeakers:  _ <<“Elaine, can you please come up to my office real quick?”>> _

Across the wagon house, Elaine and Crutchie traded confused glances and she shrugged before heading for the stairwell.

“Wonder what that’s about,” Jack mused.

“Hey, who’s that?” Davey whispered, nodding towards an unfamiliar man standing and talking with Mush and JoJo.

“Oh, that’s our new hire, to replace Henry,” said Jack. “His name’s, uh… Kenny. Yeah. Kenny.”

“You sure?” Davey teased.

“ _ Yes _ . He started three days ago. He’s supposed to be learning the track that Mush and Weasel are sharing, and take Henry’s place as A3. He’s pretty nice.”

“That’s good,” Davey nodded.

They chatted for a few more minutes before Elaine popped back out of the stairwell and immediately turned to talk to Crutchie, Sarah, Race, and Albert. “Come on,” said Jack. “I want to know what Weasel wanted her for.”

“...soon as they get someone from PE to fill in on spot, I’ll be down here,” Elaine was finishing as they walked up.

“Wait, what?” said Jack.

“Oh, hey,” she said, glancing back over her shoulder at them. “Hi, Davey.”

“Hi, Elaine.”

“So apparently Carol had a doctor’s appointment on Monday and they called her last night to tell her that she needs surgery and can’t run shows until, like, the beginning of next year, till she goes through recovery and all,” said Elaine. “That’s why Weisel wanted me; he wanted to know if I’d come down from spot to run wardrobe, because Barb doesn’t want to do it full-time and they can’t really get someone to fill in on wardrobe from PE like they can for spot. Plus, spot is easier to have people switching in and out of than dressing.”

“So you’ll be back on stage right with us?” Jack asked excitedly.

“Yep!” Elaine grinned up at him.

“Alright!” Albert grinned, reaching over to give her a high five. “Welcome back to the fun zone, pipsqueak.”

“Hey, the catwalk is  _ definitely _ the fun zone!” Crutchie protested.

“Dude, it is,” Elaine nodded. “We have a good time talking shit for pretty much the whole show.”

“During ‘Deck the Rooftops’, we have a game to see who can guess closest to the number of things that are going to fall off of people during the number.”

“Wait… what?” asked Jack

“The big elf dance number at the beginning of act two?” Elaine said. “It’s not as much fun now, but we used to try and guess how many of the elves’ pom-pom buttons would fall off—I  _ still _ don’t understand who thought it was a good idea to just attach them with whopper poppers”—

“ _ With what? _ ” Jack wheezed.

“Giant snaps. Keep up. Anyways, initially the pom-poms down the front of the elf costumes were just attached with whoppers, but they kept falling off during ‘Deck the Rooftops’ and the wedding scene, so they ended up sewing them on anyways. And the elf hats were falling off a  _ ton _ too, before they got the chin straps all sorted out, and the flower crowns from the wedding, but now everything’s safely attached and nothing really comes off, so the game isn’t any fun anymore anyways.”

“Uh… right.” Jack shook his head.

“What is it with you and your inherent need to turn  _ everything _ into a game of some kind?” Albert laughed, poking Elaine in the shoulder.

“ _ Look _ , you started it with the magnet, not me!” she laughed. “Have you guys been hiding that while I’ve been gone?”

“Technically,  _ you _ started it when you were going around trying to stick it to everything,” Albert said. “And no, we haven’t, because Carol and Barb don’t like us being around the washers.”

“You’re the one who hid it first,” Elaine muttered. “Just don’t lose it. We can play again when I come off spot.”

“Oh, there’s twenty,” said Crutchie, cocking his head to listen to the stage manager’s time call over the buzzing loudspeaker on the other side of the wagon house. “We should head up.”

“Have a good show, guys!” Elaine called over her shoulder, grinning and waving as the two of them headed out into the house.

“On the bright side, things should be a lot more interesting with her down here again,” Race grinned.

“A lot more interesting and a lot more annoying,” Albert sighed dramatically. “She’s so loud.”

.*.*.*.*.*.

Three days later, a replacement spotlight operator had been hired from the production company the theatre used, and Elaine was brought down to learn the stage right dresser track. Sure enough, the boys’ lives got a lot more interesting and a lot less quiet when she joined them. Even though she was clearly on edge, doing her best to tone herself down at least a little bit while shadowing Barb to learn the dressing track, she was still a little bundle of energy, darting around backstage, safety pin-covered apron jingling as she ran, toting overstuffed laundry baskets of shed costumes and armfuls of hangers as she shouted smart comments and clever quips back and forth with Albert and Race.

They didn’t even make it through a full week of shows before the crew took its next hit. The Friday morning after Elaine moved down from spotlight, Weisel came bustling down the stairs, looking half frantic, and in search of her once again. When he bustled back through, now in search of Kenny, Elaine trailed along behind him, back into the wagon house, a shocked expression on her face.

“What’s that about?” Albert asked, gesturing vaguely after Weisel’s receding figure.

“At the moment, I have no idea, but apparently Barb quit this morning,” she said, fiddling with the safety pins on her apron.

“Wait, what?”

“She texted Weisel and said that she wasn’t comfortable dressing and she wouldn’t be coming in any more.”

“She’s been doing it for like… over three weeks now, though,” said Jack, confused. “And you’re taking her place at it now anyways, so she’ll be back to only two days a week soon.”

Elaine shrugged. “Whatever. I don’t care. It’ll get me more hours anyways, since I’ll be six days a week. They were going to have Barb do a day for each of us so me and Sarah were only five each, but without Barb we’ll still be six. So even more overtime, which is pretty awesome.”

“You good?” Albert asked, bumping her in the shoulder with his fist.

“Hm?” she glanced up for the first time since she had come off of the stage, still playing with the pins on her apron. Jack noticed for the first time that her eyes were watery and distant and she was chewing on her lower lip. “I’m fine. Just stressed. Yesterday’s shows were the first ones I ran, and I still had Barb with me for those. And like… I know I can do it, it’s just a little scary. I’d be stressed to start running on my own no matter what, but to have to do it so suddenly is freaking me out.”

“You’ll be fine, pipsqueak,” Albert patted her on the head.

“Yeah, don’t worry,” Race teased, “we’ve seen Barb and Carol run the track enough times that we’ll yell at you if you’re not doing something you’re supposed to.”

Elaine laughed despite herself. “Thanks. I might need it.”

.*.*.*.*.*.

Back home that night, despite having done a late show and knowing they had an early one coming in the morning, the boys took the time to actually cook dinner—well, to make a few boxes of macaroni and cheese and heat up some pre-made chicken strips in the oven—for Elaine and Crutchie to come home to. When the two walked in the door and around the corner towards the kitchen and living room, the others cheered—very reminiscent of Jack’s return home after the  _ Les Mis _ strike—and Will pulled Elaine into a big hug, then kissed her on the cheek and lifted her up to sit on the counter and shoved a bowl of macaroni and cheese into her hands.

“Way to go, Laine!” Alan grinned, reaching around Will to ruffle her hair as Jack passed a bowl of food to Crutchie, who joined JD on the stools by the little breakfast counter to eat.

“It’s good to have you back stage right,” Jack grinned, patting her on the shoulder. “Al and I were bored.”

“Yeah, now we can play hide and seek with the magnet again,” Elaine laughed.

“Plus, we don’t have to deal with Barb  _ or _ Carol!” Jack said.

“Yeah; I mean, I feel bad that Carol has to have surgery and all, but it’s so much better in the costume shop to not have her around,” Elaine sighed.

“When will she be back?” Crutchie asked.

“January at the earliest,” said Elaine.

“What about Barb?” Alan joked.

“Weisel says they’re not going to call her anymore,” Elaine said. “I guess they might if they got desperate enough, but this is the second year in a row that she’s flaked on them, so I think we’d have to be  _ pretty  _ desperate.”

“What if anything gets wrecked during the show?” Crutchie asked. “As much of a pain as Carol can be, she’s a really amazing stitcher. You and Sarah are better at your jobs than she’d like to admit, but there’s some stuff she’s just better at than the two of you, simply thanks to experience.”

“Oh, you’re absolutely right!” Elaine nodded. “Carol’s amazing at her job. I’ll never deny that. She drives me absolutely batshit, but she’s a phenomenal stitcher. They’re planning to call in Barb Two or one of the other stitchers if something major happens, but Sarah and I should be able to handle most of it. You know, if they actually  _ let _ us.”

Alan passed around cups of root beer. “We’re really low on alcohol right now, but JD was nice enough to pick this up for us on his way home from class earlier.”

“If Will had let me borrow his ID I could have gone to the liquor store,” said JD.

“That’s illegal,” Will retorted. “And your British accent sucks, so they would’ve easily figured out you were lying.”

JD shrugged.

“ _ Anyways _ ,” Alan glared at them. “Here’s to all of us. May we have a good run for the rest of the show. And it’s especially to Elaine, for being such a good sport about yo-yoing between spot and wardrobe and jumping into Barb’s track so quickly. Break a leg, kid.”

“We’re  _ literally _ the exact same age,” Elaine said. “That’s how twins work.”

“Whatever, kiddo,” Alan shrugged. “To Christmas!”

“To Christmas,” they all laughed, raising their cups.

“Joy to the World,” Crutchie grinned, naming the show they were working on.

“Joy to the fucking world,” Alan sighed. “Let’s get some sleep. Ten thirty show tomorrow.”

JD chuckled menacingly. “ _ I _ get to sleep in.”

Will shoved him playfully, nearly knocking him off of his stool. “Shut up.”

“Yeah, just try not to wake me up when you leave in the morning,” JD faked a yawn, recovering from his fall by pretending he was getting up anyways, moving to the sink to wash his plate and cup.

“No promises,” Alden teased.

“Hey, no fighting,” Alan said as JD turned to glare at Alden. “We should  _ all _ get to bed. We all have an early show—except for JD, of course, who gets to sleep in the next two days while the rest of us haul ourselves off to work before Monday, when  _ we _ get to sleep in while he has an early class.”

Elaine rolled her eyes and hopped off the counter. “Y’all keep vaguing each other as much as you want. I’m taking a shower and going to bed.”


	5. Golden Rings

“Bless you.”

Jack rubbed his nose post-sneeze, glaring cross-eyed down at the offending facial feature. “Thanks,” he muttered, his voice coming out nasally.

“Tissue?” Elaine appeared at his elbow—making him jump—holding a pocket pack of Kleenex.

“Thanks,” Jack repeated, accepting the tissues. He pulled one out, returned the packet to her, and blew his nose. “I feel like crap,” he grumbled as he stuffed the used tissue into his pocket.

“Um, no thanks,” Albert said, taking a big step backwards and away from Jack and Elaine. “I don’t want to get sick already. It’s not even December yet.”

“Albert, it’s December second,” Elaine sighed.

“Wait, what? No it’s not.”

“Yes. It is.”

“No, it’s not. There’s no way.” Albert pulled out his phone and checked the date on the screen. “Update: it’s December second.”

Elaine rolled her eyes. “When will you accept that sometimes I know things?”

“Um, never. Duh.”

“Hey, Finch!” Elaine perked up as the other boy walked up to Albert. “Do you want to hear a bad joke?”

Finch groaned wordlessly and bonked his forehead into Albert’s shoulder.

“I’ll take that as a yes. What’s big, red, and eats rocks?”

Finch didn’t answer.

“A big red rock-eater!”

“Leave.”

“Okay,” she shrugged, turning and heading towards the side-stage door behind them.

Finch straightened up and shook his head. Jack opened his mouth, but wound up sneezing again before he could speak, and Finch and Albert both recoiled and took another step further away from him. Finch crossed his pointer fingers and held them up towards Jack. “Begone, infected one!”

Jack scowled, heading for the washing machines and the tissue box Elaine usually kept on top of them. He blew his nose again, discarded the used tissues into the trash can behind the stage door, and pulled several more out of the box to stuff in his pocket. He started to turn back towards Albert and Finch, but stopped to use hand sanitizer first.

“It’s too early for the Christmas plague,” Finch grumbled as Jack rejoined them, keeping a respectful distance away in case of future sneezes.

“Apparently, it’s December second already,” said Albert.

“No it’s not.”

“It is!” Albert pulled out his phone. “Look!”

“Holy shit. It’s December second.”

“And it’s not like I’m the first one sick,” Jack sniffed. “Elaine’s been sick for weeks. And Alan had that stomach bug a week ago.”

“Yeah, but Elaine gets sick as soon as the temperature drops  _ below _ sixty and  _ stays _ sick until it goes back  _ above _ sixty,” Albert rolled his eyes.

“Did no-one tell you about the Christmas plague?” Finch asked.

“The  _ what _ ?”

“Last year it was MRSA.”

“ _ Isn’t that a super bug? _ ”

“Yeah.”

“How did you guys get  _ MRSA _ ?”

“It’s unclear,” Finch sighed. “But it went around for most of December.”

“You’re joking. That’s a joke. You’re pulling my leg.”

“Hey, Race!” Albert turned around and called to the blond as he and Elmer entered the wagon house with a burst of cool air and the scent of cigarette smoke. They headed to join them, ignoring the chaos of the performers warming up in the middle of the huge room. “Tell Jack about the Christmas plague.”

“Last year it was MRSA,” Race nodded.

“The year before that it was the flu,” said Elmer. “One year it was pink eye.”

“ _ Pink eye? _ ”

“Yeah, that one came from the kids cast, but it went through pretty much everyone.”

“Okay, that was before my time,” Race laughed. Finch and Albert looked as horrified as Jack.

“Yeah, it might’ve been my first Christmas.”

“So, basically, at some point, someone in either the cast or the crew—probably the cast, since the kids are in school and they all go out for meet and greet after shows—will get sick, and it’ll just get passed around and around to everyone for at  _ least _ a few weeks. By the end of the run last December, we had Kevin’s wife here singing backstage while people lip-synced to her because they had lost their voices. That’s why we have the swings this year.” Elmer stuck his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels while he explained.

“Hand sanitizer and tissues become precious commodities,” said Finch. “Especially hand sanitizer; they order tissues in bulk, but they don’t always stay stocked up on hand sanitizer. I recommend bringing your own and stashing it somewhere if we start running low.”

“Elaine usually has a little bottle in her apron,” Albert added. “Like the tissues. She also keeps cough drops on her. And she keeps Emergen-C and herbal tea and painkillers and sometimes even Dayquil in her desk and will usually give you some if you’re pathetic enough.”

“Oh, she already drinks the tea at home,” said Jack. “I’ve had it. It’s weird. It makes my mouth tingle.”

“Yeah, it’s weird,” Albert agreed. “But she insists it helps.”

“She’s sick all the time,” Finch said. “How much can it help?”

“Look, we can’t afford to lose anyone right now, because we’re already short-handed,” said Elmer. “And Weisel hasn’t had time to learn anyone else’s tracks, so even once Kenny takes over his track, he can’t easily fill in. We can’t have people dropping like flies if we want to keep the show going.”

“ _ Do _ we want to keep the show going?” Race mumbled.

“Yes, we do,” Albert smacked him on the shoulder. “If the show crashes and burns, we don’t get paid.”

“Fair enough.”

“Hey, Mush!” Jack called, waving at the figure who walked through the door while Albert was talking. Mush waved and walked over to join them. “Are you running with Kenny today?”

“No?” said Mush. “Didn’t Weisel tell you guys?”

“Tell us what?” Finch asked, resting an arm on the shorter boy’s shoulder and leaning on him.

“Kenny quit.”

Finch nearly fell over. “Are you serious?”

“He made it what, ten days?” Albert practically doubled over laughing.

“That’s insane.”

“Why did he quit?” Jack asked. “Did Weisel say?”

“Well, okay,” Mush sighed. “One time when we were talking on the phone—Weisel called me after your first show yesterday—about it, Weisel said that Kenny  _ quit _ , and one time he said that he  _ fired _ him. So I don’t know for sure what happened, but the gist I got was that Kenny came in wanting and expecting to do concerts, and landed in the middle of all of this”—he gestured at the mess of props and set pieces beside them—“and didn’t want to deal with it. Plus, and I mean no offense to the guy, but he  _ sucked _ .”

“You’re one to talk,” Finch teased.

“Shut up,” Mush glared at him. “I can at least keep my track straight. Kenny couldn’t do that. He got stuff from act two mixed up into act one, and forgot stuff all the time, and set things in the wrong places, and forgot to do stuff.”

“Okay, to be fair, I did kind of notice that,” said Finch.

“He just wasn’t suited for the job, and didn’t really want to be doing it anyways,” Mush shrugged. “Nothing wrong with that. Hopefully it was a mutual thing between him and Weisel that led to him quitting. Best case scenario and all.”

“Okay, well if Kenny is gone, then  _ definitely _ none of us can get sick,” said Albert. “Weisel will be running that track three days a week, and that means we have no backup if someone gets sick.”

“Yeah, if one of you guys gets sick, then he’ll try and make me work weekends again, and I refuse to do that,” Mush muttered.

“Hey, Mush, you’re back!” Elaine said, once again materializing behind Jack and making him jump.

“Stop  _ doing _ that!” Jack yelped.

“Okay, it’s not  _ my _ fault that  _ you _ don’t pay attention to your surroundings!” Elaine protested. “My apron jingles, and that is  _ plenty _ of warning. It’s not my problem if you can’t hear it.” She turned away to cough into her elbow.

Finch again held out his arms, pointer fingers crossed, towards her. “Infected! Get away! We don’t need your disease here!”

Elaine scowled at him, licked her palm, and reached towards his outstretched hands. Finch yelped and ran away, heading for his console on stage left.

“Coward!” Elaine yelled after him, then headed for the bottle of hand sanitizer on the washer.

“No, that was just gross,” said Mush.

She turned towards him, halfway through pumping hand sanitizer into her palm, and reached her hand out towards him, taking a step closer. Without another word, Mush ran off after Finch. Elaine laughed and rolled her eyes. “ _ Both _ of them are cowards.”

“Oh, hey, I hid the magnet again,” Albert said, walking over to join her. “Good luck finding it.”

“Remember that ‘being within my reach’ is one of the rules of that game,” Elaine glared up at him before turning to search for the tiny magnet that was the subject of the game.

“I’m  _ pretty _ sure you can reach it.”

“Yeah, last time you said that, I couldn’t.”

“It’s not my fault you’re short,” Albert shrugged.

“Well, I’m the perfect height to kick out your knees, so there’s that,” Elaine muttered, feeling around on the backs of the washers for the magnet.

“Please do,” Race sighed dramatically as he passed them, heading through the stage door. “Then maybe we’d get some peace and quiet around here.” He stuck his head back through the door and grinned cheekily. “Although, you’d still be around then, so it seems unlikely.”


	6. Geese A-Laying

“Jack, come on, we’re going to be late!” Elaine yelled, bouncing on her toes by the front door. Crutchie was already outside, halfway down the stairs. Jack came barrelling around the corning, shoving his arm through the sleeve of his jacket, a piece of toast hanging out of his mouth as he scrambled towards the door. “Do you have your Secret Santa sheet?” Elaine asked, stepping out of the way as he shot out past her.

Jack nodded, the piece of toast flapping up to hit him in the nose, as he struggled to get his hand through the end of the sleeve, which was twisted around and tucked into itself from when he had pulled it off the night before.

Elaine sighed. “Stand still a second.” She grabbed the sleeve and untangled it so that Jack could stick his hand through, and they followed Crutchie down the stairs, heading for Elaine’s car in the parking lot down the block.

“So how does this Secret Santa thing work, anyways?” Jack asked, pulling the rumpled sheet of paper out of his pocket.

“Have you never done a Secret Santa before?” Elaine asked.

“Um… No.”

“Okay, well, it’s pretty simple. Everyone folds their sheet up and puts it in this big sack that Weisel has, and we stand in a circle and he goes around and we all draw someone else’s sheet—if you draw yours, you put it back. Then you’re that person’s secret santa. For the next three weeks or whatever—we usually do the reveal the Saturday before Christmas, I think—you leave little gifts for them around the theatre. You can do them as scavenger hunts for the person to find, or just put them somewhere where they’re sure to see them, or enlist people as ‘elves’ to deliver the gifts for you, or whatever you want to do. I think the cap for the little gifts is like five or ten dollars; it says at the bottom of the sheet. And then at the end, you have a big gift, and that has a minimum amount instead of a maximum, and we all sit around the tree on the carpet in the wagon house and you have to guess who your Secret Santa is before you get your gift. It’s really fun!”

“What if we get someone we don’t know?” Crutchie asked. “Like, I don’t know any of the performers. I doubt most of them even know I exist. I don’t want to end up with one of them and not know what to get them.”

“Well, that’s what the sheet’s for,” said Elaine. “It’s to give you an idea of what to do even if you don’t know the person you end up with at all. But also, if you get a performer, then I can be your informant and stealth some information for you.”

Crutchie and Jack laughed. “That’s good,” said Crutchie. “I’m a little less nervous now.”

“And you know you don’t  _ have _ to do it,” said Elaine. “Just decide by the time we draw names after sound check today. If you don’t want to, that’s totally okay.”

.*.*.*.*.*.

Several hours later, the process was complete, and everyone had split off on their own to brainstorm gifts for their targets. Elaine sidled up to Crutchie, who was standing next to the stage left door to the wagon house, looking morose as he stared down at the sheet of paper in his hands.

“Who’d you get?” Elaine asked. “You don’t have to tell me,” she added quickly.

“No, it’s okay,” Crutchie sighed. “Just… Exactly what I was afraid of happening happened. I got Kate. I’ve never even  _ spoken _ to her.”

“Dude, that’s fine!” Elaine grinned. “Kate is Molly’s best friend, and I’m friends with Molly from this summer. I’ll just ask her for some tips.”

Crutchie looked immediately relieved. “Really? That would be awesome. Thanks so much.”

“No problem,” Elaine shrugged.

“Who did you get?” Crutchie asked.

Elaine grinned wickedly and looked around furtively before leaning in to whisper: “Finch.”

Crutchie laughed. “Oh no. Poor guy.”

“I have so many ideas,” Elaine laughed. “He’s going to hate me by the end of this.”

“Finch doesn’t hate you,” Crutchie laughed. “Although, if you really annoy him with this, I guess he might.”

“That’s the goal!” Elaine chirped. “I have to go check presets. I’ll get back to you once I ask Molly.”

“Thanks!” Crutchie called after her, still grinning.

.*.*.*.*.

Back in the apartment that night, everyone was chattering about their Secret Santa plans. Elaine and Crutchie arrived to a discussion between Jack, Alan, Alden, and Will about who they each had, and what they were thinking about getting each of them.

“I’m just glad I got someone I kind of know,” said Jack. “I mean, I don’t know Romeo that well, but I’d rather have him than someone I’ve never even spoken to.”

“What, like Kate?” Crutchie said.

“Who’s Kate?” Jack asked.

“She’s one of the singers,” Alan laughed.

“The short one with brown hair,” Elaine added. “She’s the light pink elf that gets married in the wedding scene.”

Jack stared at her. “There’s a wedding scene?”

“‘What Christmas Means to Me’,” she said. “The second song in act two. She gets married to Michael.”

“I didn’t even realize there was a wedding,” Jack shrugged. “Is that the one where they’re all running around and stuff?”

“Um… no?” said Elaine. “I mean, they’re kind of running around, but not as much as in ‘Deck the Rooftops’. It’s the one where most of them are wearing the white choir robes, and—oh, you know when the girls come back on our side of the stage and I help them get into the pink gowns instead of their elf dresses?”

“Yeah, I’ve seen that.”

“That’s for the wedding scene.”

“Oh.  _ Oh _ . Okay. I got it now.”

“They’re the bridesmaids.”

“Okay.”

“Kate’s the one who sings that song.”

“ _ Oh _ , got it. So you got her for Secret Santa?” Jack turned his attention to Crutchie.

“Yeah, and I’ve never even spoken to her,” he sighed. “She probably won’t even know who I am.”

“But that’s good, though!” said Elaine. “That means she won’t guess you’re her Santa! Isn’t that part of the point of the game?”

“I guess,” Crutchie shrugged. “Did you get a chance to talk to Molly about her?”

“I asked her during our quick change today and she said she’d let me know once she thought of some things,” said Elaine. “She also said that she feels a little bad for you because even  _ she _ has a hard time shopping for Kate, and they’ve been friends for years, so she’ll do her best to help.”

Crutchie laughed at that. “That makes me feel a little better, then.”

“If you guys need an elf, I’m happy to deliver presents,” Alden chirped from over by the stove, where he was stir-frying vegetables. “I decided not to do it this year. So I’m safe to talk to and have deliver and all.”

“Who did you guys get?” Elaine turned to the other boys.

“Well, as you heard, Jack got Romeo,” said Alan. “I got Elmer.”

“I got Claire,” Will named one of the female dancers, and shrugged. “I am ambivalent towards this result.”

“So when do we start giving presents?” Jack asked, filching a slice of bell pepper from the bowl next to Alden, deftly dodging the spatula that came flying towards his hand afterwards.

“Next week,” said Alan. “It’s at least one a week, ten dollars or less, every week until we do the reveal.”

“We should go on a field trip to Five Below tomorrow!” Elaine bounced up and down as she made the suggestion.

“You just want an excuse to go to Five Below,” Alan teased.

“Look,” Elaine said, hopping up onto the counter next to the sink, “it’s a great store. And it’s  _ excellent _ for Christmas shopping in general, and especially for a gift with a cap of ten dollars! Everything there is  _ below _ five dollars! And it’s not cheap shit, like the dollar store. It’s pretty decent. I’d know—I go there all the time.”

The boys laughed. 

“Well, I’m convinced,” said Jack. “I’ll come, but you guys have to help me shop for Romeo. You know him better than I do.”

“I’ll come too,” said Crutchie. “I don’t know what I’m looking for, but maybe I can find something. And if nothing else, maybe I can pick some stuff up for you guys, too.”

“Alan? Will?” Elaine turned to her twin and boyfriend.

“Sure, why not,” Alan shrugged. “I don’t have anything better to do.”

“Same,” said Will.

“Aw, dang; I was going to ask if I could come along, but that’s it for El’s car,” said Alden.

“I’ll drive,” Jack shrugged. “I don’t know where I’m going, so youse’ll have to give me directions, but I don’t mind driving. Especially considering Elaine drives  _ me _ to work every day.”

“We should stop for groceries while we’re out,” said Will.

“Yeah, it’s not fair to make JD do all the grocery shopping,” Elaine agreed.

“The van’ll be better for that then anyways,” said Jack.

“Yay!” Alden grinned. “Roommate outing!”

“Because we don’t spend  _ enough _ time together already,” Jack mumbled. He missed the incoming smack from Alden’s spatula this time and yelped as it made contact with his arm. “Ow!”

“Hey, just be glad you  _ like _ your roommates,” Alden teased. “If you hated us, imagine how  _ miserable _ your life would be.”

Jack paused for a moment, contemplating the idea. Alden glared at him and raised his spatula again, and Jack laughed. “I’m kidding. You’re right. I love you guys.”

“Not to get sappy, but so do I,” Crutchie grinned.

“Aw, guys,” Elaine said, her voice artificially sweet. “Stop. You’re too nice.”

“Enough,” Alden said before anyone could retort. “Food’s done. Let’s eat.”

.*.*.*.*.*.

It was nearly two in the afternoon by the time they all tumbled out the apartment door and trouped down the rickety wooden stairs, around the front of the building, and down the sidewalk to where Jack’s rusty old van was parked, in the back corner of the parking lot.

“Every time we get in this thing, I wonder if it’ll actually start,” Alan mused as they climbed in.

“Shut up,” Jack grumbled. Then, softer: “You’ll jinx her.”

They laughed as Will slammed the back doors shut. Jack turned the key, whispering an almost-silent prayer as the engine sputtered before roaring to life. “See?” he said. “She’s fine.” He patted the dashboard and grinned to himself.

“ _ How _ did you guys make it literally across the country in this thing without dying?” Elaine asked.

“I’m still not sure,” said Crutchie.

“Stop picking on my van!” Jack yelled.

The trip was not a short one. They spent a fair amount of time in the store before heading to get groceries, which was an ordeal in and of itself. Back home, Elaine and Crutchie went up the stairs first, and then put the groceries away while Alden, Alan, and Will brought them up and Jack parked his van. Once everything was away, they made a simple dinner together—quesadillas with bell peppers, mushrooms, onions ,chicken, and other fixings—before settling down together in the living room with a movie on the TV.

“What did you find for Finch?” Crutchie asked Elaine.

“Socks,” she grinned. “I got a few packs of Star Wars socks. And also some snacks. Turtles—his favorite animals are turtles, and he has a pet turtle, so I got him some of those little chocolate and pretzel and caramel and peanut things. He’ll probably yell at me for that once he knows I had him.”

Crutchie laughed. “Jack, what did you find?”

“Snack food,” said Jack. “It’s easy. He had a lot of different food listed on his sheet, too, so I just got a few different things.”

“Food is a good first-week gift,” said Alan. “Since favorite food is listed on the sheets, it’s easy to just pick up some snacks and throw them in a bag and do that as your first gift until you can think of something better.”

“Crutchie, did you find anything for Kate?” Will asked.

“I got her some peanut butter cups,” said Crutchie. “She had them as her favorite snack on her sheet.”

“Hopefully Molly will have some suggestions in the next few days,” said Elaine. “Cos I looked over the sheet when you showed it to me, and I also don’t know what to do for half of that stuff. And she didn’t give options—she just kind of put one thing down in each blank, so it’s not like ‘here’s a few different things I’d be happy with’, which makes it even harder.”

“And I don’t want to get something she won’t like,” said Crutchie, “‘cause I don’t want her to be unhappy or anything.”

“I’m sure she’ll be happy with anything,” said Elaine. “Just do your best. She’s nice, too—and not fake nice like  _ some _ performers, as far as I can tell—so that helps.”

“Yeah, that’s true,” said Crutchie. “I just want her to be happy.”

Jack nudged him with his elbow. “Don’t worry. I think Elaine’s right; she’ll most likely be happy just to receive a gift. This is the sort of situation where it’s the thought that counts.”

“I just can’t wait to find out who has  _ me _ ,” said Elaine.

“You’re so nosy; you probably just want to know who  _ everyone _ has,” Alan laughed.

“ _ Look _ ,” said Elaine. “You’re not wrong.”

“Well,” said Alden, taking a sip of his water, “you’ll know in a few weeks.”

“Oh, are you kidding me?” said Elaine. “I’m going to spend the next three weeks frantically trying to figure out who  _ everyone _ has, not just who has me! It’s a mystery!”

“You suck at solving mysteries,” said Alan.

Elaine tried to smack the back of her twin’s head, but he dodged the blow. “Enough,” she scolded. “Just because you’re right doesn’t mean you have to say it.”


	7. Swans A-Swimming

Jack flinched away as one of the kid-cast members walked offstage and immediately started coughing. “Gross,” he muttered, watching the girl stop to blow her nose and use some of the hand sanitizer on the washing machine.

“Kids,” Race grumbled. “Little germ factories. I wish Spice would stop putting them in the shows.”

Jack grinned and grabbed a set piece as Will brought it offstage. Once his path was clear of dancers leaving the stage for their dressing rooms, he took it—carefully—through the door into the wagon house and lined it up with the other set pieces and props by the loading bay door. He glanced over at the wagon house carpet and frowned slightly when he noticed the dance captain sitting with her head between her knees, wearing only a blue, fifties-style dress, unzipped in the back, her matching coat on the floor behind her.

“Jack!”

He heard the yelp just in time to get out of Elaine’s way as she nearly slammed into him, carrying three wash baskets stuffed full of costumes and stacked on top of each other so high that she could barely see over them. “Sorry!” he called after her. He bent down to pick up a fluffy petticoat that had fallen off the top of the stack when she dodged him, and followed her over to the carpet, where she set down the baskets to hang up costumes before taking them into the currently-crowded dressing rooms. “Hey, is Missy okay?” he asked, voice low, as he handed her the petticoat.

Elaine glanced over her shoulder and sighed. “I don’t know. She’s running a limited track today because she isn’t feeling well, but I don’t know what’s wrong.”

Jack trailed along after Elaine as she headed for her quick-change area for the rest of her baskets. “She’s not the only one. One of the kids was coughing all over the place a few minutes ago.”

“Gross,” Elaine groaned. She pulled a little bottle of hand sanitizer out of her pocket and squirted some into her hand before offering it to Jack. “Ow,” she winced. “I forgot I scratched my hand.”

“Yeah, hand sanitizer will always remind you of that,” Jack teased.

“Cass isn’t feeling well either,” said Elaine. “And I think Steph said a few of the band are coming down with something. But they don’t have to run around the whole show like the dancers do, so hopefully they’re able to work through it. If the dancers go down… well.”

“Yeah,” Jack sighed. He eyed her up as she coughed into her elbow. “How are  _ you _ feeling?”

“Fine,” she shrugged. “A little congested, a cough, but that’s also pretty normal for me. You?”

“Fine,” Jack said. “I’m glad Crutchie isn’t down here for all of this. He gets sick real easy.”

Elaine laughed. “Yeah, that’s good then. We’ll have to do our best not to pass anything to him. I kind of wish I was still up on spot, if it meant I had less of a chance of getting whatever’s going around.”

“I thought you liked it back down here with us,” Albert teased, bopping Elaine’s basket—not hard enough to knock it out of her hands, but hard enough to make her stumble slightly—as he passed.

“Only until I remember that you’re down here too,” she called after him.

Albert grinned and turned around to walk backwards and flip her off—until he ran into Elmer, emerging from the sidestage “hole” that was Elaine’s quick-change area.

The rest of the show flew past, slipping into a flurry of activity between shows as both Missy and her fiance headed for the ER with high fevers and other assorted symptoms. The crew found their break cut short to spend some time wiping down everything possible with lysol wipes while Elaine and Sarah raced around, trying to find a costume for the fill-in guitar player and make sure that all of the costumes the swing dancer taking Missy’s place had been altered enough for her to wear them through the show.

The next day, they were down another dancer, and heard that the ER had diagnosed all three absent cast members with the flu.

“Well, it looks like we know what this year’s plague is,” Finch mused. He was sitting on a bench outside of the stage right door, watching the assistant show captain and other dancers help the swing go over choreography.

“The flu,” Albert said ominously, kicking at a loose piece of tape coming off of the floor.

Jack groaned and leaned against the wall beside Finch. Race and Mush were standing with them, too, and Crutchie was seated next to Finch. “Maybe it won’t be so bad,” said Crutchie. “Maybe only a few people will get it, or it won’t be a really awful strain.”

“Unlikely,” Finch grumbled. “We basically live together. We spend most of our time here, together—crew even more than cast—and in pretty close quarters. It’s inevitable that once someone gets sick, lots of other people will too. Maybe not everyone, but a lot of us.”

“You’re such a pessimist,” Crutchie laughed.

“There’s a difference between pessimism and realism,” Finch protested.

“Yeah, and you’re a pessimist,” said Albert.

They were interrupted from any further argument as Sarah slipped through the circle and walked up to Finch. She stuck out a small, wrapped package with a tiny bow on top. “From your secret Santa.” Once he took it, she walked away.

“Tell Elaine thanks for me!” Finch called after her. He ripped open the wrapping to reveal a pair of socks, with a Star Wars-themed ugly sweater-style pattern on them. “Oh, wow. Socks. What a surprise. This is the fifth pair.” He looked up to see Elaine coming out of the stairwell door. “Hey! Elaine!”

It took her a second to find his voice, and she smiled and waved when she did. “You ready for your bad joke of the day?” she asked, starting to walk closer.

“Absolutely not.” Finch held up the socks and waved them at her. “Thanks for the socks.”

“What?” she furrowed her brow, her lips quirking up into a slight smile despite herself. She shook her head and walked away; Jack could tell that she was hiding a grin.

“Literally the least subtle person I know,” Finch sighed. He stood up, stuffing the socks into his pocket, and wandered away.

The door burst open with a  _ bang _ and a rush of blissfully cool air, and Les Jacobs burst into the wagon house, running towards the stairwell. Davey followed along at a more sedate pace. There were bags under his eyes, and his skin was paler than normal, but he was smiling. In a blink, all of the other boys were gone, and Jack was left standing by the stage door alone as Davey walked towards him.

“Hey, Davey!” he called, trying to adjust his position against the wall to look more casual and nearly falling in the process.

“Hi, Jack,” Davey grinned. “How’s it going?”

“Not so bad,” Jack shrugged. “But, you know, apparently if you spend too much time here, you put yourself at risk.”

“Wait, what?”

“We’ve got a bunch of people out with the flu or something,” Jack explained. “Don’t want you getting sick in the middle of your finals.”

“Oh, don’t worry, I just turned the last one in. Not that that means I want to get sick now! It just means that if I do, it won’t be the end of my world.”

“Hey, that’s great though! How did they go?”

Davey shrugged. “The two written ones were rough, but I did my best. Sure, if I get a bad grade, I’ll be absolutely crushed by the weight of my personal failings for a while, but I have this little window of time between turning them in and getting my grades back where I can say ‘no matter what grade I get, I did my best, and that’s all that matters’. It usually lasts about three days before I start imagining worst-case scenarios of failing classes and wind up in a depressive spiral.”

As he spoke, Jack grew more and more concerned. “Um… Are you okay?”

“I’ve hardly slept all week,” Davey admitted. “When Les told us Missy was sick, we moved my parents out to stay with my mom’s sister for a few weeks, since my dad’s still immuno-compromised from the chemo, and since Les and Sarah will almost  _ definitely _ bring something home at some point, and I’ll be here more with classes out so I’m a risk too.”

Jack nodded. “At least he’ll be safer there.”

“Oh, yeah, totally,” Davey agreed. “It’s good. We don’t have to worry so much. But also it’s been a single day and I already have  _ so _ much more respect for both my own mother and every single parent in the world ever because I’ve been taking care of Les for less than twenty-four hours and already I’m completely overwhelmed.”

Jack laughed. “He seems like a handful. Good luck.”

“Thanks. I’ll need it.”


	8. Maids A-Milking

By the end of the next week, Missy was back—still running on a limited track—along with her fiance, the band’s guitar player, but the cast was also down one female singer and one male singer, along with one of the children and the other still-sick dancer. There were lots of other people less severely sick as well, including crew members. Crutchie spent as little time backstage as possible; he, Buttons, and Elmer holed up at the light and sound consoles at the front of the house, only coming backstage as necessary to grab things from their lockers or help with pre- and post-show duties and cleaning. Jack wasn’t entirely sure if there was much of a point keeping Crutchie away from everyone else at work, considering that at home he was still in close quarters with Jack, Elaine, Alan, Alden, and Will, all of whom were in nearly constant contact with the rest of the cast, but, so far at least, he hadn’t gotten sick and everyone was doing their best to keep it that way.

The next week was a flurry of activity as the cast kept shifting around to cover holes when people were sick. There were two days where Albert also got sick and had to call out, for which stage right found themselves joined by Weisel as he did his best to cover Albert’s track, a disgruntled Mush being forced to run their shared track on stage left for most of the weekend.

As soon as Molly passed some tips on to Elaine, she and Crutchie took a trip to Target one morning and spent the rest of it furiously wrapping Secret Santa presents to stash at Kate’s changing station before she got to the theatre for the day’s shows. Once the gifts were tucked into place, Crutchie tacked up a piece of paper, written in a fancy decorative script, over the small pile:

**_You may open one once a week, but don’t cheat! Santa’s little elves are watching, and will know if you open them early._ **

“Do you think that’s creepy?” he asked, taking a step back and staring at the paper.

Elaine leaned around him to read it and shrugged. “Maybe a little, but only as much as the entire Santa myth is,” she said. “Am I one of the elves?”

“You’re the only elf,” Crutchie laughed, following her out of the dressing room.

“Hey, Elaine, thanks,” Finch said as he walked past them, popping open the top of a can of Coke before chugging half of it. “I didn’t have time to make coffee this morning.”

“Huh?” Elaine said. “What are you talking about?”

“Yeah, whatever,” Finch rolled his eyes and wandered away.

“How did he guess it so quick?” Elaine muttered, turning away to head for the stage right door.

Crutchie shrugged. “You’re not the most subtle person ever.”

Elaine thought for a moment. “You’re not wrong.”

.*.*.*.*.*.

Friday evening between shows, Jack was standing by the stage right door—along with his usual companions, Elmer, Race, Albert (who was still slightly sick but was doing significantly better), Finch, and Crutchie—when shouting from across the wagon house caught their attention. They went to see what was going on, only to be nearly trampled by Elaine and Les Jacobs, being chased by JoJo and Romeo, who were flinging stuffed fake “snowballs” at the other two. Several of the other members of both the adult and kid casts were also involved in the brawl, which was mostly taking place around the warm-up carpet and outside of the dressing rooms.

“Oh, I am  _ not _ helping to pick those up,” Finch grumbled.

Race slipped away, heading for the backstage door as he pulled out his cigarettes and lighter, Albert trailing along behind him. Elmer muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “I’m too old for this shit” and followed the two of them.

As Romeo chased Les into the stairwell—“Be careful!” Alan shouted after them—Elaine took shelter from JoJo and Alden behind Jack, giggling and out of breath.

“Hey, don’t drag me into this!” Jack protested, fishing around behind his back to try and grab her and pull her out. Before he got a chance, a snowball hit him in the back of the head, and he turned around slowly. To his utter shock, he found none other than Davey Jacobs standing in the stage right doorway, grinning guiltily. “Okay, that’s it,” Jack grumbled. Elaine stuffed a snowball into his hand and ran off, back into the brawl in the middle of the wagon house, while Jack wound up to pitch the snowball back at Davey. Davey, however, was faster, and vanished back into the wing before Jack could throw the little stuffed ball at him. As Crutchie and Finch found themselves being pulled into the main battle, Jack gave chase after Davey.

Sound check was over, but the house hadn’t been opened yet. Elmer hadn’t started the house music yet, so the stage was almost completely quiet, except for the muted clamor of the snow-puff war in the wagon house. Jack couldn’t tell where Davey had gone, and slowed down, cautious in the dim backstage light. He crept out onto the stage. It was lit by a handful of lights up on the grid above him, but most of them were currently out. The giant flat of a city street that was lowered to open the show was in place, only the back visible from where Jack was, and that muted any noise coming from the house—not that there was much. He looked warily around, trying to figure out where Davey was. There was no sign of the other boy.

Jack tiptoed further out onto the stage, feeling oddly reverent in the stillness. He was most of the way across before he heard a soft footfall and whipped around to see Davey trying to sneak back towards stage right from the opening in the center of the bandstand. Their eyes met, and Jack froze for a second, snow-puff in hand. Davey was grinning, eyes sparkling and cheeks pink with excitement. Jack immediately forgot what he was doing and stood there, staring, mouth open. His hand fell to his side, snow-puff forgotten.

Davey’s eyebrows rose and his grin widened. “You gonna throw it at me?”

“Huh?” Jack blinked, snapping back into the moment. “What?” He looked down at the snow-puff in his hand. “Oh, right,” he laughed, hoping that Davey didn’t notice how awkward he’d just become.

Davey cocked his head towards the back wall of the stage, the wall it shared with the wagon house. “It’s quiet out there. I wonder if they got in trouble.”

Jack hastily stuffed the snow-puff into his pocket—although that didn’t do much to hide it, just made an awkward bulge over his hip—and followed Davey back out into the wagon house, where everyone was picking up the scattered snow-puffs. They both joined in, neither speaking, as though they were both pretending it had never happened.

.*.*.*.*.*.

The next day, Saturday, was the last Saturday before Christmas, and, therefore, was the day of the big Secret Santa reveal. After the second show, all of the participants—plus a few spectators—gathered on the carpet in the wagon house, in front of a tree Weisel had set up the night before, under which they’d all stashed their final gifts at various points during the day.

“Okay, so how this works,” Weisel called to quiet everyone down, “I’ll start. I’ll make a guess as to who my Santa is. If I’m right, I get to open my gift, and that person makes their guess. If I’m wrong, I have to wait to open my gift, but that person still makes a guess about their own Santa. Is anyone confused?”

Finch was one of the first to guess, and immediately picked Elaine, who was sitting next to him. She laughed and rolled her eyes as she stood up to get his present from under the tree. “However did you guess?”

By the end of it, everyone was happily chattering with one another, thanking their Santas for their gifts and so on. Kate and Crutchie were talking—for the first time ever—in one corner of the carpet.

“Honestly, your gifts were so spot-on; if I hadn’t known better, I would’ve thought Molly was my secret santa,” Kate laughed.

“Well, I have to admit that I had some help,” Crutchie grinned. “Elaine”—he snagged her as she walked past, pulling her in and tucking her under his arm—“helped me do some digging, because I looked at your sheet and had no ideas. She asked Molly for help, and then passed what Molly said on to me.”

“Aw, that’s so great,” Kate laughed. “She never let it slip that she knew who had me. Thank you so much!”

“I’m glad you liked everything,” Crutchie said, beaming.

“See, you did great”! Elaine poked him in the side as Kate walked away. “All that worry over nothing.”

Crutchie laughed. “Yeah, yeah, ‘don’t doubt yourself, Crutchie’, whatever. I still doubt myself.”

“Same,” Elaine grinned, slipping out from under his arm. “Finch!”

The tall boy sighed and walked over towards her. “What?”

“Okay, I just have to know. How did you know I had you?”

“Because you only ever used girls to deliver your gifts,” Finch shrugged.

“ _ What _ ? That’s not true! I had Andy, and Crutchie, and Michael all deliver things!”

“Weird. Maybe I just missed all of them.”

“I can confirm that I just left the one you gave me on his chair,” Crutchie piped up.

“I literally  _ saw _ Michael hand you the one I gave him,” Elaine grumbled.

Finch thought for a minute. “Okay, yeah, I guess I remember that happening.” He shrugged. “This is cool though,” he said, holding up his final gift.

“Thanks,” Elaine perked up. “It was Crutchie’s idea, though.”

“That’s not entirely true,” Crutchie laughed. “I just asked the right questions to guide her to that as a solution.”

Finch shrugged again. “It’s still cool. Thanks. Although, about the turtles—I said turtles were my favorite  _ animal _ , not my favorite  _ candy _ .”

“Yeah, I just thought that one would be funny,” Elaine admitted.

Finch rolled his eyes. “You’re so weird.”

Elaine grinned. “Thanks! Do you want to hear a bad joke?”

“No.”

“Okay. As your final Christmas present, I will not tell you a bad joke.”

“Thank you. That’s the best present you’ve given me yet.”


	9. Ladies Dancing

Elaine smacked her hands down on the top of Finch’s console—which she could barely see over—making him and Mush jump. “Finch! What are you doing Sunday after the show?”

“Uh… Driving home for Christmas?”

“We’re going to go see Star Wars if you want to come.”

“I can’t. I’m driving home.”

“Okay. Mush, do you want to come?”

“I’ve never seen a Star Wars movie, so I’m going to pass.”

“ _ You’ve never seen a Star Wars movie? _ ”

“No. And when people react like that, it makes me want to never watch any of them, just to make a point.”

Elaine narrowed her eyes and stared at him. “Whatever. Weirdo.”

Alan appeared behind her. “Who’s a weirdo?”

“Mush.”

“Definitely.”

“Thanks,” Mush glared at Alan as he wandered into the wagon house. “So, you guys are twins?”

“Yeah, why?”

“You don’t really look alike.”

“Yeah, we both look like Alden and our mom, but not much like each other somehow.”

“I definitely would have guessed that either you or Alden or the two of them were the twins, not you and Alan.”

“We get that a lot.”

“Do you guys have twin telepathy?”

Elaine rolled her eyes. “No. That’s not a real thing.” She stuck her hands in her apron pockets and rocked back on her heels. “So, do you want to make this your first Star Wars movie?”

“Absolutely not.”

She shrugged. “Fair enough. Hey, JoJo!” she turned and trotted along behind the other boy as he headed into the wagon house. “Do you want to go and see Star Wars with us?”

“Who’s us?” JoJo asked.

“Uh… Me, Alan, Alden, Will, Jack, Crutchie, Elmer, and I think Sarah and Davey?”

“Sounds fun! When are we going?”

“Sunday after the show? It’ll be kind of a long day, and it’ll be a push for me and Crutchie and Sarah to get there with laundry, but we should be able to make the last showing for the night.”

“Okay! I’ll be there.”

.*.*.*.*.*.

Sunday was the last show day before Christmas. They had three full days off in a row for Christmas: the Monday that they normally had off, in addition to Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. JD had finished his finals and Elaine drove him to the airport to fly home early on Sunday morning, meaning that the apartment would be quieter than normal when they got home that night, between everyone else’s exhaustion and his absence. The Sunday show felt like the longest show they’d done since the start of the run. Everyone was jittery, full of nerves and anticipation for the day off.

At intermission, Jack, Albert, Race, and Elaine were crammed into the little alcove that housed the washers and dryers, doing their best to ignore the sulfuric stench seeping out of the washers’ drain pipes.

“That is just…  _ so _ bad,” Race pinched his nose and stepped away from the pipes.

“I think,” said Albert, leaning forward to fruitlessly peer down the pipe, “that part of the drain must sit too high or at the wrong angle to drain properly, and that means that water just sits there without draining and just, like… stagnates.”

“You’d think with how much we run the washers it would flush it out, though,” Elaine grumbled. She was fiddling with the tiny bulb in the bite-light around her neck, trying to adjust its position so she could see better when using it.

Albert shrugged and leaned back, waving his hand in front of his face as if it would do something about the stink in the air. “I don’t know. That’s just my guess.”

Elaine shrugged, dropping her bite-light to adjust the dress laid out on one of the dryers for quick-change purposes.

“Hey, Finch!” Jack called, stopping him in his tracks. “Are you coming with us tonight?”

“I  _ can’t _ ,” Finch groaned. “I have to be home by seven tonight for family Christmas stuff.”

“Aw, are you sure?” Elaine leaned around Jack to peer at Finch.

“Yes,” Finch sighed. “If I’m late, my mom might actually kill me.” He glared at her. “I told you this the other day.”

“Did you? Probably.” Elaine sighed.

“I’m going to try and go see it Christmas Day,” he said. “But no spoilers before then!”

“Yeah, I’m going with my brothers tomorrow,” said Albert.

“Race, are you going tonight?” Finch asked.

“Nah,” Race shrugged. “I don’t care enough about Star Wars to brave the theatre on a weekend evening right before Christmas, which also happens to be the weekend directly after the movie opening.”

“That’s pretty valid,” Elaine admitted. “I wouldn’t for anything less than Star Wars.”

Race took a half-step away. “Star Wars isn’t worth it”—

“You get back here and say that to my face, Race Higgins,” Elaine snapped. She started to move towards him, but he danced away and Albert and Jack both reached out to stop her—Jack with an arm around her shoulders, Albert by grabbing the side of her apron.

“Them’s fightin’ words with Elaine,” Albert laughed.

“You bet they are,” Elaine grumbled. She jerked backwards and turned away to sneeze into her elbow, both of the boys taking a step away from her on each sneeze. “Ugh,” she groaned. She blew her nose and put hand sanitizer on, then went back to fiddling with her bite-light.

“Well, none of you better spoil it for me,” said Finch.

Elaine held her hands up. “Spoiler ban until  _ at least _ after Christmas. Probably longer, depending on how many people see it over the break.”

“Good,” Finch nodded. “I guess, since I can’t go to Star Wars tonight, I’ll take a bad joke.”

Elaine’s face lit up. “Really? Okay, hang on, let me think of a good one. Um… What’s big and grey and can’t fly?”

“I don’t know. A whale?”

“No. Well, technically, yes, also true, but the answer I was looking for was ‘parking lot’.”

“ _ Why the fuck would I have guessed parking lot _ ?”

“I don’t know, but that’s the answer to the question,” she shrugged. “Have a good show!” She slipped out from between Jack and Albert, lifting her bite-light to her mouth as she stepped backstage. Seconds later, they heard spluttering, and she returned, face twisted into a grimace. “I got hand sanitizer on my bite-light…”

.*.*.*.*.*.

“I can’t believe you’re all going to the movies tonight.”

Elaine, Sarah, and Crutchie traded glances, then grinned up at Medda from where they were seated on the wagon house floor, waiting for the laundry to be finished. They had changed out of their uniforms, into far more comfortable street clothes, while waiting, and had already clocked out upstairs so they wouldn’t have to go back up in the crunch of time they had to get to the theater. “Medda, come on; it’s  _ Star Wars _ ,” Elaine laughed. “I personally won’t make it more than a few more days without seeing it. I’ll explode.”

Crutchie laughed. “That’s a definite possibility here.”

Medda shook her head, grinning. “That’s commitment.”

“The wash is almost done, and then we’ll be out of your hair, Medda,” Sarah said. “We already clocked out; we just need to hang up the shirts and tights and we’ll be gone.”

“We thought we timed it better to when the wash would be done,” Elaine sighed.

Before anyone could say anything further, there was a  _ buzz _ and a chime from the direction of the washers. Elaine and Sarah leapt to their feet and Sarah darted towards the washers while Elaine helped Crutchie to his feet. Medda laughed to herself and headed off, shaking her head, to turn off the lights on the stage and in the house. By the time Crutchie was up and heading towards the z-racks and drying rack on the carpet, Sarah had pulled everything out of the washer and dumped the load into a basket. She shoved it to Elaine as the second washer began to chime; Elaine took the full basket over to Crutchie and the racks while Sarah filled the second, and they got to work.

Soon enough, all of the dress shirts had been hung on the z-racks, while all tights, fishnet stockings, dance briefs and undershorts, show bras, socks, and the brightly-colored elf leotards and undershirts were draped over the drying rack. The men’s undershirts went back into a washbasket and were tossed into a dryer with the sweat towels. Elaine powered on the washer while Sarah ran onto the stage to call to Medda that they were leaving, and then they were scurrying down the outside stairs, into the parking lot, and piling into Elaine’s car.

“Everyone buckled?” Elaine asked, not waiting for an answer as she shifted the gears and started driving.

“Wait!” Sarah giggled, clicking her seat belt into place.

“Elaine, have I never been in your backseat before?” Crutchie asked, pulling a beanie baby spider with giant, sparkly eyes out of the pouch on the back of Elaine’s seat.

“Uh, probably not,” she said. “We usually stick you in the front.”

“Ah, sorry!” said Sarah.

“No, it’s okay!” Crutchie said. “You get motion sickness. I don’t.” He reached into the seat pouch again, this time producing a large plastic box full of half-melted crayons. “Elaine, I have some serious questions about some of the stuff you have back here.”

“Wait, what did you find?”

“Melted crayons? Which kind of explains why it usually smells like crayons in here, actually…”

“Oh, I forgot about those. A lot of that stuff is leftover from the babysitting and nannying jobs I did back in Boston.”

“Like this spider?”

“Oh, no. He’s my friend. Give him here.” She reached her hand back, and Crutchie put the spider in it. Elaine set him on the recessed part of her dashboard behind her steering wheel, in front of the gas gauge. “Well, that makes it a little hard to see how much gas I have, but that’s okay.”

Crutchie and Sarah laughed. “You know you’re crazy, right?” Crutchie teased.

“All the best people are,” Elaine sang out as she pulled into the theatre parking lot. “Wow, it’s busier than I was expecting.”

“I hope we can still get tickets,” said Sarah.

“Alan said he and Jack and Davey got tickets for us already,” said Elaine. “He texted me before we left. They wanted to make sure we’d be able to get in.”

“Oh, good,” Sarah grinned.

Elaine parked the car and they all clambered out, heading for the theatre building. Inside, they found Alan, Alden, Will, Davey, Les, and Jack all waiting for them. JoJo and Elmer arrived just after them, and joined the group as Alan was talking:

“So, we weren’t able to get  _ all _ of the seats together,” he said. “Most of us are in the third row. Jack and Davey said they’d take a pair of seats that’s a little further back, and then there’s another single seat a few down from the rest of us, but we’re going to try and just get the people in between us to swap for that one.”

“Okay,” Elaine nodded, accepting the ticket Alan handed her.

“Can I sit at the end of the row?” asked Crutchie. “It’s easier to get in and out, and I don’t want to have to walk past a bunch of people with my crutch.”

“Oh, yeah, Jack said you’d probably want that one, so I saved this ticket for you,” said Alden, passing the slip of paper to him.

“Okay, does everyone have a ticket?” Alan said. “Great. Let’s go. The movie starts in five minutes.”

.*.*.*.*.*.

When they all filed out of the theatre, Les and Alden in particular were chattering excitedly to each other, but the others were all talking over each other as well. The only one silent was, surprisingly, Elaine, who stood quietly tucked up against Will’s side, under his arm, eyes and nose red and cheeks tear-stained.

“You okay, Laine?” Jack teased.

“Shut up,” she sniffled.

Will laughed and rubbed her arm. “She got a little emotional during the movie.”

“‘A little’?” Alan repeated, laughing. “She cried for two hours straight through.”

“Wait, you could  _ hear _ that?” Elaine gasped, mortified. “I thought I was being quiet!”

“You were quiet, just not…  _ that _ quiet,” Crutchie laughed.

“Oh no…” she groaned.

“Why were you crying?” Jack asked.

“Leia,” Elaine sighed. “Look, Carrie Fisher was my  _ idol _ as a kid. She’s the only celebrity whose death has made me cry”—

“Also for several hours,” Alan interjected.

—“and seeing her on the screen again was just… I mean, episode eight was bad enough, but this one was just… you know. Hard to watch, but in a good way. And the ending of a series, especially one that has meant so much to me as Star Wars has, is always an emotional time to me, so.” She shrugged.

“She also cried after the last Hobbit movie,” said Alan.

“And rewatching Return of the King,” said Alden.

“The last Jurassic World movie,” said Will. “Although that one wasn’t the last of the trilogy.”

“No, but it was  _ traumatic _ ,” said Elaine. “All the dinosaurs dying, and then the ones they rescued almost dying? Awful.”

“Don’t forget Detective Pikachu!” Alan piped up. “We went to see it for our birthday this year, and she cried the whole way home.”

“Can we  _ not _ talk about how easily I cry please?” Elaine laughed. “Anyways, the reason I was crying then wasn’t so much about Detective Pikachu—even though that movie did make me weirdly emotional—I had a lot of things on my mind and the movie just kind of pushed me over the edge.”

“That’s valid,” Crutchie shrugged.

“Moving on,” said Jack, “who’s driving home with me?”

“You can either take Alan, Alden, Will, and Crutchie straight home, or take Davey, Sarah, and Les to the theatre to get Davey’s car,” said Elaine. “I’ll take whoever you don’t.”

“You should probably take the Jacobses,” said Jack, ignoring the twinge of reluctance in his stomach. “Your car is smaller. Don’t want to cram too many people into it.”

“Yeah, sitting in your back seat when it’s full is  _ not _ fun,” Alden laughed.

“Okay, that’s fair; it is pretty tight back there,” Elaine agreed. “Let’s go, then. Davey, you’ll want to sit behind me; more leg room.”

“‘Cause she’s so short she has to sit  _ inside of _ the steering wheel to reach it!” Alan called after them.

“Shut up!” Elaine yelled back.

“Make me!” Alan retorted, sticking his tongue out. “Oh, wait; you can’t! Your legs are too short. You’d never catch me!” He took off running towards Jack’s van in the distance.

“I hate it when he’s right,” Elaine grumbled.


	10. Lords A-Leaping

Jack Kelly woke up Christmas morning with a grin already on his face for the first time in his life. Bing Crosby’s ‘Winter Wonderland’ was blaring through the apartment already; he wondered who that could be blamed on. In the bunk beneath him, he felt Crutchie move, then heard a yawn. Before either of them could move, their door slammed open, bouncing off of the wall behind it to swing back into the person who had opened it with a thud and a yelp. Over in the other bed, Alan groaned and pulled his pillow over his head.

Jack propped himself up on one elbow and peered over the edge of his bunk as the door opened again, far more reasonably this time, and Alden stepped into the room, grinning sheepishly.

“Good morning,” Crutchie said blearily. “Why?”

“It’s Christmas!” Alden said. “Come on! Present time!”

A shriek and indistinguishable shouting came from the other end of the apartment, along with the sounds of some sort of struggle.

“Elaine’s up,” Alden laughed. “Come on.” He walked across the room and yanked Alan’s blanket off of him. “Let’s go.”

Crutchie was already on his feet, and used his crutch to reach up and poke at Jack. “Ah, stop!” Jack laughed.

“Don’t make me come up there, Jackie boy,” Alden teased, his face materializing at the end of Jack’s bed.

“Okay, fine; I’m coming!” said Jack. “Move and let me down. And don’t call me ‘Jackie boy’.”

“Sure thing, Jackie boy,” Alan teased as Jack climbed down, darting out of the reach when Jack tried to smack his arm.

“Don’t worry about getting dressed,” said Alden as Crutchie opened the door of his wardrobe. “Christmas morning is more fun in pajamas, no matter how old you are.” Crutchie grinned, and led the way out to the living room, where Elaine was seated cross-legged and looking sulky on the couch, Will on the floor in front of her. The coffee table had been moved away, shoved under the dining table and between the dining chairs there. A tree had been set up on Thanksgiving in front of the unused sliding doors that opened into the boys’ room, decorated in brightly colored ornaments—lots of Target-bought felt animals, a pom-pom garland from Hobby Lobby, and a handful of colorful glass balls—and rainbow lights, topped with a crocheted star. They’d all tucked presents for each other under the tree, wrapped in a variety of papers—Elaine’s were done in plain brown craft paper and decorated in yarn scraps, Alden had used metallic silver paper, Jack had refused to wrap anything and had put all of his gifts in bags, and so on—but there was also an extra set of packages, neatly wrapped in blue, silver, and white snowflake-patterned paper that had appeared a few days earlier that Jack was admittedly curious about.

Once they were all settled on the couch and floor, Alden and Will passed out the packages. Everything had been labelled with their names, and soon enough everyone had a little pile of gifts in front of them. “JD said he left his for us here and we’re allowed to open them today, and he took all the ones with his name with him when he went home,” Will said. “Because he knew we wouldn’t have time to open them with him before he left, and didn’t want to wait until he comes back for the next semester in January to open them together.”

“Sounds about right,” Alan laughed.

“And these are from our dad and stepmom,” said Alden, passing out the blue-silver-white packages. “They sent something for everyone,” he added, passing a pair of gifts to Crutchie and Jack.

“Wait, us too?” said Jack.

“Why?” asked Crutchie. “They don’t even know us.”

“Why not?” Elaine shrugged. “They sent one for JD and he’s never met them either. He left before they got here, so he has to wait until January to open it, but they still sent him one.”

“So how does this work?” Crutchie asked.

“We go around the circle and everyone opens one thing at a time,” said Will.

“And then we eat breakfast!” Alden grinned. “I have French toast and sticky buns in the oven, and I’ll make eggs and bacon and sausage too.”

“I’ll help!” said Elaine.

“We’ll  _ all _ help; it’s Christmas,” said Alan.

.*.*.*.*.*.

Two hours later, they were all back in the living room together. The discarded wrapping paper had been cleaned up, breakfast eaten and dishes loaded into the dishwasher, and they had all gathered together to watch Christmas movies. Crutchie and Alan had insisted on the Grinch to start, and Jack was now settled on the couch between the two of them, while Alden sprawled on the floor on a pile of pillows dragged down from the crawlspace. Will was seated in the saucer chair with Elaine sitting on the floor in front of him, leaning back against his legs and knitting.

Jack looked down at his legs. Alan, Elaine, and Alden’s parents had sent them all matching pajamas—which they had all semi-reluctantly changed into to take a picture to send back to them—light flannel board shorts that were light green with little snowmen, reindeer, and strands of Christmas lights on them, matching short-sleeved button-down shirts, and snowflake-patterned socks. Beside Jack, Crutchie was snuggled under one of Elaine’s handmade blankets, his head on Jack’s shoulder, humming along with the song being sung in the movie. Alan was nodding off on Jack’s other side, his head bobbing up and down. If Alden hadn’t been kicking his feet in time with ‘You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch’, Jack would have thought he was asleep too. It was quiet and oddly still. Even Elaine was hardly moving, besides the knitting needles bobbing in her hands.

Jack smiled to himself and pulled the edge of Crutchie’s blankets, snuggling further down into the couch.  _ This isn’t so bad,  _ he thought to himself, for what was possibly the hundredth time—maybe even more—in the past months since he and Crutchie had come to Santa Fe.

This was their first  _ real _ Christmas. They’d both grown up in foster care, in and out of homes, spending a few weeks or months—sometimes even as much of a year, if they were lucky—in a place before moving on. Jack couldn’t think of the last time he’d had Christmas with someone besides just Crutchie. After aging out of the system, it had just been the two of them for years, and they’d never put much energy into holidays or even birthdays. Crutchie’s birthday had fallen during the  _ Les Mis _ run this year, and not only their roommates, but  _ everyone _ they worked with had gone out of their way to make it a good day for Crutchie.

He thought about the gifts he’d received that morning. His roommates had definitely planned them out together: a high-quality sketchpad from Elaine, a set of drawing pencils and pack of charcoal from Alan, colored pencils from Alden, pastels from Crutchie, and a set of watercolor paints, brushes, and paper from Will and JD. Everyone had put thought into their gifts; they weren’t just things that had been bought last minute because the giver just needed to find something to give. Jack had actually teared up a little a few times—and hidden it behind yawns each time—as he opened the gifts. He couldn’t wait to experiment with the materials, to fill the sketchbook with art and really make it his own. His fingers were itching for the pencils; he was tempted to just get up and sit at the table and play with them, but didn’t want to get up from the couch.

He heard Crutchie sigh and felt him pull away. “Go ahead,” the blond yawned.

“What?”

“I know you want to draw. Go for it. Don’t stay here because of me.”

Jack laughed, wrapped an arm around Crutchie’s shoulders, and ruffled his hair. “Thanks.”

“Yeah, just draw me first! That’s the trade-off.”

“Fair enough.”

Within minutes, Jack was tucked away in the back seat of the table with his new sketchpad, pencils and charcoal and colored pencils splayed out in front of him, positioned so that he could see each of his roommates. He stared down at the blank page, feeling suddenly intimidated by its unmarred-ness. After a moment of hesitation, he flipped to the next page, leaving the first empty.  _ The first page has to be perfect. I’ll decide what to put there later _ . He turned the pad sideways and chewed on his lip, then started sketching. Under his pencil, an image slowly took shape. First was the outline of the room itself, followed one by one by rough shapes of each of the people and pieces of furniture in it.

At some point, probably when they were switching movies, Alden got up to peer at what Jack was drawing. “Whoa, is that us? That’s really good, Jack.”

“Thanks,” Jack mumbled, fully wrapped up in his work.

By the end of the next film, he was done. He hadn’t used much color—only bits here and there as shadows and accents—and had instead relied mostly on the shading from the drawing pencils to capture the image in front of him. By the time the drawing was finished, people had moved: Crutchie had turned sideways on the couch to rest his feet on Alan’s lap and fall asleep curled up against the back cushions of the sofa, Elaine had joined Alden on the pile of cushions on the floor, and Will had curled up into a tighter ball on the saucer chair. The drawing captured them as they had been when Jack started it. He’d considered trying to add himself in between Crutchie and Alan, but had decided against it, wanting to focus on the others instead. 

He smiled to himself. It was a piece to be proud of. It had captured exactly what he wanted it to: the feeling of home.


	11. Pipers Piping

No-one wanted to go to work on the twenty-sixth. Since Christmas Day had been so drowsy, they’d all had a hard time sleeping that night, so dragging themselves out of bed to get ready for work had been challenging. There was no lack of envy for Will, Alden, and Alan, who didn’t have to be in until two hours later than the others, although they still got up at the same time in a show of solidarity.  Jack , Crutchie, and Elaine had to drag themselves down the block to the parking lot, almost completely silent save for the odd yawn or wordless grumble that escaped as they drove to the theatre. Inside, everyone else was just as still and quiet as they were—a “Christmas hangover”, as Race put it.

Jack moved through his pre-show preparations like he was moving through soup. Everything seemed more difficult than it should be, even simple things like rolling the cart-mounted carousel horses across the wagon house or rigging the carnival games. Elaine trudged through the wagon house, dragging the z-rack full of freshly-pressed dress shirts and scowling as the first performers began to arrive and fill the wagon house with their chatter—although even they weren’t as loud as normal. Not that anyone on the crew was complaining about that.

The only group that had even close to its normal level of energy was the child and teenage performers, who burst through the door in small packs, each one its own explosion of noise and color and force. Behind one of the little groups—the one containing one Leslie Jacobs—Jack had to hide a grin at the sight of an utterly exhausted-looking Davey Jacobs. When Davey caught sight of Jack, he perked up and smiled, giving the other man a small wave, before vanishing into the stairwell. A few minutes later, he was back, and sat down next to Jack on the bench by the stage right door with a sigh.

“How was your break?” Jack laughed.

“Well, we kind of crammed everything about Hanukkah—besides the candles; we did those during Hanukkah, but didn’t have time for anything else between working and finals and everything—into the past three days, and spent a lot of time on video chat with our parents. They wanted to come home, but decided it was probably best to just wait until the show closed because a lot of the time a second round of sick goes through in the last week just because everyone’s exhausted.”

“Great,” Jack groaned.

They watched Albert and Elaine walk past and pointedly ignore each other. Both of them arched their eyebrows at the odd interaction—or, rather, lack thereof—and watched the two head their separate directions.

“That was weird,” Davey observed.

“Yeah… I’m not really sure what it’s about. They were fine earlier.” Jack looked around and waved JoJo over. “Hey, what’s up with Albert and Elaine.”

JoJo shrugged. “Who knows. We’re all exhausted. They always fight when they’re tired. It’s probably nothing.”

Before the break, Jack had thought that the final Sunday’s show had been the slowest of the run. He had been wrong. The first show back was the slowest one—literally and figuratively; not only did it  _ feel _ like it was dragging on, but, upon checking the time on his phone (repeatedly) he realized that was actually taking longer than normal to get through the show.

“Does the music sound slower to you?” he asked Race and Albert at one point as they moved the stage right house into place for a scene.

“Definitely,” Race grumbled.

“Even the band is out of patience with the show,” said Albert.

The second act, despite the high-energy start with the dancing and singing elves, things seemed to get even slower. From Race’s headset, Jack could hear the stage manager complaining about the lack of energy and speed—very loudly—and had to laugh. There was nothing to be done about it, after all.

The second show wasn’t much better, although the tempo picked up a little bit. They were still a few minutes longer than their normal run time, but had halved the amount of time that the day’s first show ran over.

For the rest of the week, things slowly moved closer and closer to normal. Everyone was still quiet and a bit lackluster, but the onstage energy picked up considerably the more shows they did—and the closer to closing they got. No-one ever figured out why Elaine and Albert were mad at each other, and Jack had a sneaking suspicion even the two of them wouldn’t have been able to answer if asked, but they were back to their normal scheming selves in a few days. Jack and Race decided to thank Mike, Ike, and JoJo for that, as another snowball war had been started—although this one was a stealth version that involved sneaking up on people before, after, and between shows; during intermissions; and even during lulls in the shows themselves and snipe-shotting one’s opponent with one of the little stuffed snowballs. Elaine always had a snow-puff in one of her apron pockets, and Albert kept at least one in the cargo pockets of his pants at all times. Jack guessed that Mike, Ike, JoJo, and Romeo—who was drawn into the war a little later—kept them on their persons most of the time as well. He never quite got used to the sight of fist-sized balls of fluff flying past his face in the middle of carrying props across the wagon house, usually followed by a startled yelp.

To everyone’s surprise, Elaine was the best participant in the war, and, when they were scolded by Weisel and called the competition off, she was declared MVP. Despite self-professed bad aim and poor depth perception—which the others could confirm, as other accuracy-based games that were played amongst the crew had illustrated her poor performance in these categories over the past months—she was scarily accurate with the light snow-puffs. It became common for her opponents to be in the middle of a conversation only to have a small ball of fiberfill and faux fur hit them in the back or head and to see a giggling, grinning Elaine dart around a corner or into a stairwell on the far side of the wagon house.

As they counted down to their final show, it was almost like everyone’s breath was held at the same time. The shows started to get  _ faster _ now, and the protests by the stage manager over headset became pleas to slow down rather than speed up. Even the dancers commented on the increase in tempo, coming off from the tap number and elf sections breathless, sweaty, and laughing. A new energy seemed to be building up amongst both cast and crew, and Jack felt himself getting caught up in it without even noticing, the sort of energy that came with a storm on the horizon, with a wave about to crest in the ocean—with any sort of impending change.

Yet, with that nervous energy came an odd undercurrent of sorrow. As awful as so many of the parts of the show and its run had felt, as draining as the experience had been, as much as Jack wanted to be able to take a few days and just  _ sleep _ —even though he knew that half of January was packed full of concerts and tours so he wouldn’t be able to do so for long—he was sad to see the show ending.  _ Les Mis _ hadn’t felt like this, at least not that he could remember. He had felt ambivalent to tear that set apart after the final show, and happy to run his track for the final time. He wasn’t sure if it was because he had spent more time and energy working on the Christmas build, or just because he had grown so much more attached to the people he worked (and lived) with during this run, but he was truly sorry to see it go.

December 29th, 2019 was the second-to-last night of shows. Most of the performers spent more time than usual in the dressing rooms after the show, collecting personal belongings to take home with them. Many of them would be leaving the city or even state the next day, after the final show, heading for jobs at other theatres, as most of them weren’t permanent residents—the exceptions being two of the male singers, along with Alan, Alden, Will, and the show captain—of Santa Fe. One of the kid casts had had their final show the day before and had said tearful goodbyes to the adult cast members, each other, and even some of the crew. Some of them had returned tonight to see some of their friends on the other cast, and another round of tears went through the wagon house. Tonight’s kids cast had laid out their show t-shirts on the wagon house carpet and asked everyone to sign them. To his surprise, even Jack had been asked to sign several, and had reluctantly given in and done so.

Another reason that the ending of the show was particularly bittersweet, for Jack and his roommates, was that Will had told them, a few weeks earlier, that he would be moving back home to London in January, after accepting a job there. Despite jokes about having more space in the apartment and one less person to share the bathroom with, everyone was sad to see him leave, even Jack and Crutchie, despite only having known him for a few months. As the penultimate show drew to a close, Jack couldn’t help but notice Alan, Alden, and Elaine’s misty eyes as they prepared to say goodbye to their long-time friend and partner. He swallowed a lump in his own throat. It would certainly be strange to not hear Will’s accent somehow always discernible through the chatter of the entire cast, or run into him heading for the bathroom in the middle of the night at home. He’d be around for another week before leaving—it wasn’t like he was flying out after the last show, like most of the others, but quite suddenly it felt very much like he was going to be gone before they knew it. Maybe, Jack thought, that the show they had almost felt would go on forever was finally coming to an end…


	12. Drummers Drumming

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who’s read this far!!! I really appreciate it! This is the last chapter for this story, but there will be one more in this series, which I’m planning to post around late February/early March! Check out my Tumblr (@maliciousbubbl3s) to stay up-to-date on upcoming fics (because there are several) and check out other stories that I’ve only posted there! Thank you all for your support, and I hope you enjoyed the story!!!

The morning of December 30th brought a similar reluctance to get up, get ready for work, and get to the theatre that they’d had the day after Christmas. However, while the feeling had faded at least a little bit on the 26th, today it refused to leave, instead seeming to almost get worse. By the time Jack, Crutchie, and Elaine got to the theatre, it was almost like a pit in their stomachs. Even Albert, Race, and the others on the crew, most of whom had spent the last week, talking about how  _ excited _ they were to end the show, seemed somewhat sad to see the show end. A few of the performers were in early, continuing to clear personal belongings from their designated spots in the dressing rooms, and saying preemptive tearful goodbyes.

Most of the cast arrived well before their call time, and spent the extra time chatting on or around the warm-up carpet in the wagon house, expressing mixtures of joy at the end of such a rough run and sorrow at the loss of such a huge part of their lives. It was almost like they were putting into words exactly what the crew was feeling but didn’t want to say out loud.

The show was faster than anyone wanted it to be. Most of the children and teens were in tears by the end of the second act, along with several of the adults. Elaine and Sarah—along with Carol, who was back only to help sort laundry and bag up dry cleaning and mostly confined to a chair—were working double duty; not only were they dressing and getting people changed, but they were starting laundry with discarded costumes (mostly Elaine since her track was on stage right with the washers anyways), sorting items to be washed vs. dry-cleaned vs. just sprayed with vodka before storage.

As soon as the show came down, while the performers were still standing around and laughing and crying and talking with each other, the crew jumped into action to start dismantling the set. There was only so much that would be done that night; a lot of the large set pieces would have to wait until they had a truck available to load them onto directly, but they got started on the smaller pieces. Weisel collected props, Finch and Elmer struck the audio setup, and Mike, Ike, and Buttons got started taking down the strands of carnival lights that had been hung from the catwalk to the top of the proscenium. Crutchie was left in charge of changing loads of laundry and hanging not-machine-dryable items on a z-rack tucked as far out of the way as possible, while Carol continued going sorting discarded costumes and Elaine and Sarah dragged z-racks full of costumes to be sorted later and wheeled bookshelves lined with wig heads into the elevator and into the rehearsal room in the basement.

To Jack’s surprise, the strike wasn’t a long one. For the most part, they focused on getting things off of the stage and ready to be moved to the warehouse instead of actually ripping things apart like they had for  _ Les Mis _ . At some point, Crutchie stopped putting new loads of laundry into the washers and Carol vanished as Elaine and Sarah lugged the bags of dry cleaning and z-racks full of damp shirts and dresses into the basement to be dealt with later. By the time they were all done, the rolling dumpster was full—for the third time of the night—and Jack and Albert and Finch dragged it out to the actual dumpsters on the far side of the parking lot.

When they got back inside, Weisel and the stage manager had everyone in a circle, which the three of them joined, and were going over the schedule once they came back after New Year’s. As soon as they were done, the crew scattered, half-running to go downstairs and clock out and get out of the building for the next few days. Despite their hurry, however, they all conglomerated in the parking lot after clocking out, Race and Elmer smoking and all of them chatting quietly, reluctant to leave despite being so happy to have the show down. Elaine, Crutchie, and Sarah were only a few minutes behind, and stood in the parking lot with the rest of the boys, as Weisel, Medda, and the stage manager drove off.

“It’s weird to think we’ll never do this show again,” said Crutchie. “Like, _Les_ _Mis_ , there’s always a chance we’ll do or see it again somewhere, but this one is technically over forever.”

“I mean, since we’re repeating Christmas shows now, we’ll be putting it on again in five years,” said Albert.

“Yeah, but it won’t be the  _ same _ ,” said Crutchie. “Although, technically a different production of  _ Les Mis _ would be like that, too.”

“There will never be an exact copy of any show ever again,” said Elaine. “I remember one of my theatre professors in college saying something like that. Even if it  _ were _ the same show, with the same costumes, set, crew, cast, and everything, it wouldn’t be the  _ same _ , no matter what. And it shouldn’t be. That’s the beauty of theatre. It’s always something new. That’s why shows like  _ Les Miserables _ and  _ Annie _ and  _ Sound of Music _ and Shakespearean plays and  _ Waiting for Godot _ are classics, because we can see them over and over again and always love them.”

“Who loves  _ Waiting for Godot _ ?” Albert grumbled.

“I do. Shut up.” Elaine glared at him. “But that’s why bringing a show down is so hard. Because no matter how hard you try, it’ll never be the same ever again. You’ll never replicate the experience. It’s the end of an era, for lack of a better term. And it’s beautiful and sad and relieving and hard all at once, but that’s okay. It teaches us to let go in order to create something new the next time around. It gives us space for that.” She shrugged and stuck her hands in her sweatshirt pockets, scuffing her toe against the asphalt.

“Well,” Race sighed, tossing his cigarette butt on the ground—and ignoring Elaine’s glare at the action—“we’ll be back before we know it for tours, and we’ll be getting ready for the spring play soon enough. It’ll be back to ‘creating’—at least for Spice—before we know it, so let’s take the next few days to catch our breath and relax before we’re thrown back into it. January and February are a little crazy for concerts, so we won’t have time to catch it then. Gotta do it over the next few days.”

In ones and twos, they began to drift away, calling out farewells and joking about seeing each other in a year. Jack, Crutchie, and Elaine climbed into her car and reversed the silent drive that they had taken that morning, feeling hollow. Jack tried to pinpoint the feeling—did it come from not having to be at work for the next few days, from closing the show, from losing one of his roommates in a week, from saying farewell to so many people over the past few days, even if he wasn’t particularly close to most of them? He thought about Elaine’s words.  _ No matter how hard you try, it’ll never feel the same ever again. _ He nodded to himself.  _ I guess that’s it _ .

Six months ago, if someone had told Jack Kelly he’d be working in a theatre and be this sad and torn up over closing a show, he would have laughed in their face.  _ I really have changed since coming to Santa Fe _ , he mused.  _ But that’s not such a bad thing. _ He found himself thinking forward to the next show, a play he couldn’t remember the title of, set to open in mid April.  _ I guess that’s something to look forward to. _ Another thing he never would have anticipated doing: looking forward to opening and running a new show.  _ Well… here’s to 2020. Let’s make these shows as good as the last two. _


End file.
